I know crackers are normally something folks think about buying, not cooking. Heck, you might even need them as an ingredient in something else that you’re cooking. Far be it from me to cook something that might just as well be bought (I’m grinning a little at this). Well, today I baked crackers, and you know what? They were really delicious.
The cracker recipe I used is minimally adapted from one posted recently on Everyday Dish.
Here’s what I did:
LEMON PEPPER CRACKERS
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2 T nutritional yeast
1 t baking powder
1 t granulated garlic
1 T Lemon Pepper (I used Adam’s Extract brand)
½ cup water
3 T extra virgin olive oil
Preheat oven to 400 degrees (F).
First whisk together all the dry ingredients to thoroughly combine.
Add the oil and water and stir till the dough comes together. It should be a bit on the dry side, but if it absolutely refuses to come together, add water a little bit at a time till the cracker dough is willing to combine.
Divide the dough in half and roll each half out so that it is (get this) cracker thin and fits neatly into a lined half sheet pan. ( I only have one Silpat, so one of my baking sheets was Silpat-lined, the other was parchment paper lined, and the crackers cooked on each turned out to be roughly identical.) Transfer the rolled out dough to your 2 baking sheets. I found this to be easiest if I rolled the dough from the counter onto the rolling pin and then unrolled it into the baking sheet. Take a knife or pastry wheel or pizza cutter and carefully score your crackers (here’s a funny aside - I don’t use my pizza cutter for pizza - I use a chef’s knife. I really only use the pizza cutter for things like cutting up pasta and [apparently] crackers).
Chuck them into the preheated oven for roughly 15 minutes. Watch them carefully - depending on how thinly you rolled your dough, you may only wind up cooking them for 12 minutes, or if they’re a bit thicker, it could take 18-20 minutes for them to get golden brown and crispy. They will continue to harden up as they cool, so don’t despair if there’s still a bit of give in your crackers.
Once cooled, I stored my crackers in a big zip-top bag. They were fantastic, and I will absolutely make them again. It was very easy to alter the recipe for different spices and flavors. The Lemon Pepper Crackers were zingy and rich, and I can’t seem to stop eating them. The recipe this is based upon was for Rosemary Garlic Crackers (see link above), and they sound quite good too. And all told, it took less than thirty minutes to throw this snack together, so this was far from an arduous, labor-filled affair. This is almost something that could be whipped up on a whim with whatever flavorings you happen to have around.
