Homemade Cracker recipe with herbs

 

I tried to recreate this recipe yesterday, ended up close to a couple of Internet recipes but going to document it here as a 'first attempt' at what I used to make on a regular basis.

Important equipment : parchment paper, large baking pan, rolling pin

Heat oven to 450 degrees

Ingredients :

1 cup flour, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp baking powder

Choose your spices : 1 tsp oregano (Italian seasoning, or any other flavor of herb you like), 1/2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper, 1/4 tsp strong garlic powder granules, dash of tangy ground dill weed herb.

Mix all of this together in a bowl, stir well to combine.

SETUP : important!  Do these now while your hands are clean

Put up to 1/2 cup extra flour in a cup next to your cutting board.

Tear off a piece of parchment paper (not wax paper) and place it on your prepared baking sheet on top of the stove.

Warm up 1/4 cup of water (do it now, because it will be more difficult in a minute when your hands are full)

Proceed : 

Get out 2 tbsp of very cold Kerrygold or Irish full fat butter

Use a cutting board and a knife to cut the butter into small pieces very quickly - do not give it time to melt or soften.

Dump the butter into the flour mixture and begin to cut and fold* it into the flour with a fork.  Press down on every small bit of butter and drag it to work it into the flour.  Do this until you cannot see any large bits of butter in the flour mixture.

*--I'm sure you could use a machine for this..but well, I'm me.  I learned to do it this way, and it's good to know how.   The longer you mix and knead it the more sticky the gluten in the flour becomes, as well.. You want to avoid this because it makes the product stiffer and we want soft crackers.   I like to have my actual hands into this process so I know exactly how long it takes to combine and no more.

Slowly begin to pour the 1/4 cup of warm water into the flour mixture.  Pour a little, mix, pour a little more, mix... until you can see a ball of dough beginning to form.  Use your hands to gently knead and scrape the mixture into a ball that does not stick to your hands.  If you used a bit too much water, grab some from the extra half cup and dust the ball all over and pat.

Set rolling pin on cutting board, make sure you have a good 2 foot square space at least to roll out the crackers.  Take ball out of bowl and set bowl aside out of the way.  Using excess flour, dust your rolling pin and the cutting board.  Roll the ball of cracker dough out, dusting excess flour underneath edges if needed.  Pick up entire flat sheet with your hands, hold it with one and dust the underneath of the cutting board again with flour.  Flip the dough onto the dusted flour.  Add more dusting on top of flattened dough.  Roll again.  Repeat until mixture is about 1/8 inch thick.

 

Use a biscuit cutter, clean shotglass, or sharp knife to cut small shapes out of your cracker dough.  The crackers are best when no wider than 2 inches.  Try not to cut or roll the edges of the crackers thinner than the centers.  They will puff up a bit during baking, as well!   Place the crackers onto the parchment paper leaving at least 1/4 inch apart or more.  If the crackers are wide you might want to prick holes into each with a fork.

Reduce oven heat to 425 or even 400 degrees, depending on how close you will watch

Place crackers in oven for about 10 minutes, checking often.  The crackers should 'puff' a bit.  As soon as you begin to see a brown toast happening on the top of the crackers, use good oven mitts to remove pan from oven.  Flip every cracker over once.  Let stay on hot pan for another 5 minutes before removing to a rack.  Crackers can be eaten almost immediately after cooling.  After crackers have sat on the rack for 5 to 10 minutes more, then they can be put in a bag and stored in the refrigerator.

Crackers might get a little harder in the refrigerator.  Pulse for about 5 seconds on a paper or glass plate in the microwave and they should soften.  Good with cheese, jelly and soup!

I think there is a better recipe to be had, maybe including cream of tartar and baking soda?  It has been more than a decade since I made these on a regular basis, and I remember it was one of the few things I used my cream of tartar for.  According to the internet I saw that 1/4 tsp baking soda plus 1/2 tsp of cream of tartar equals one teaspoon of baking powder?  Will update after further experiments - and if there is a better one I'll post a link to it.