12/01/2019

Easy Homemade Crackers

Name: Easy Homemade Crackers
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 40 min
Ingredients: 350 g plain flour (plus extra for rolling); 1 tsp salt; 60 ml olive oil; 200 ml water; 4-6 tbsp mixed seeds (e.g. fennel, cumin, sesame, flax); water (for brushing the dough)

Easy Homemade Crackers are perfect for those of us wanting to avoid the palm oil found in so many packet crackers.

In this post I’ll show you how simple, and good, a homemade cracker is. I’ll also give you ideas for different toppings and flavourings. You can even use Easy Homemade Crackers as a base for canapés.

Jump to Recipe

How many times have you picked up a packet of crackers or savoury biscuits in a store, turned it over to look at the ingredients, and found it contained palm oil? Too many, I’ll bet.

What’s the problem with palm oil? Read more here.

While the majority of what we eat at our house is made at home from unprocessed vegetables, fruits, dairy, meat, etc., crackers are something which, until recently, we’ve always bought ready made. I suppose it’s because, most of the time, you just want a handful, so assume it’s not worth making a batch.

But, after discovering that so many shop bought crackers and savoury biscuits contain palm oil, I decided to have a go at making my own.

And I’m so glad I did. Not only are they dead simple, but they stay good and crunchy for weeks in an airtight container.

Whether you make them plain to go with cheese or for dipping, top with seeds or other goodies, you’ll find loads of uses for these fab Homemade Crackers.

HOMEMADE CRACKERS

I discovered that four basic ingredients are all you need for fantastically crisp and crunchy Homemade Crackers. Flour. Salt. Olive oil. Water. That’s it.

I’ve used plain white flour in my crackers but you could experiment with others (see an update at the end of the post for rye & sesame crackers). And because the crackers don’t need to rise, I suspect a gluten-free flour would work just as well.

All you do is mix those ingredients into a simple dough, roll, cut, prick with a fork, bake. Done.

The dough’s really easy to work with. There’s no resting or chilling. And, unless you want fancy shapes, there’s not a lot of cutting out and re-rolling.

I just roll the dough very thinly (no more than 1 or 2 mm) onto a piece of baking parchment and mark it into squares or rectangles.

You don’t need to cut all the way through the dough, although I accidentally did in some of these images. But it doesn’t really matter as long as you don’t go through the paper. Using a pizza wheel makes marking out nice and quick.

The whole thing is then lifted up, plonked on a shallow baking tray and it’s ready for the oven.

The crackers cook very quickly, in around 10 minutes. You might find ones at the edges are done in 5 minutes, so I snap those off and put the rest back in the oven.

If you didn’t roll the dough really thinly, you may need to turn the crackers over just to dry out the other side. This will only take another minute or so.

Once the crackers are lovely and golden, put them on a wire rack until cool enough to handle. Then just snap them apart along the lines you made and it’s done. Crispy, crunchy Homemade Crackers ready to eat.

SEEDY HOMEMADE CRACKERS

For my first batch of crackers, I topped the rolled out dough with all kinds of seeds. Fennel. Cumin. Flaxseed. Sesame. To get the seeds to stick, brush the rolled out dough with water before sprinkling the seeds.

Press the seeds gently into the dough by lightly going over them with a rolling pin. Then go in with your knife or pizza wheel and cut into into squares or strips.

I took another batch of the crunchy, seedy crackers to BBC Radio Stoke’s local food and drink show, The Takeaway, when I was invited to their Christmas special. They went down pretty well with three of my homemade dips: Feta & Yogurt, a red, tomatoey version of my chilli and herb Zhug plus Baba Ganoush with Roasted Garlic.

GREAT WITH CHEESE

One of the things that led to my Homemade Crackers was the discovery that a certain well known maker of cream crackers uses palm oil in their product. (By the way, cream crackers don’t contain any cream. Apparently, the name refers to the method originally used to make them.)

Like many Brits, I grew up with cream crackers. If you fancied a cheese and cracker snack, they were what you went for. Simple, non-fancy, and a great partner for cheese or even just butter.

So imagine how thrilled I was to find that Homemade Crackers go wonderfully well with cheese too. So good, I even topped them with some of my very last jar of favourite Smoky Tomato-Chilli Chutney. The combination of crisp cracker, creamy mature Cheddar plus hot and sweet chutney was a winner.

canapés

If you’re after something a little more special than a midnight snack of cheese and crackers, then how about serving Homemade Crackers with a range of different toppings, canapé style, with drinks or as party food?

I made up a batch including Manchego cheese with two types of chutney, cream cheese with chopped red pepper, Smoked Salmon Paté, and Baba Ganoush.

As with any canapé, put the toppings on at the last minute to ensure the base stays crisp.

A few more suggestions for toppings:

Homemade easy Potted Cheese
Manchego cheese & Serrano ham
Guacamole & chopped chilli
Hummus & chopped olives
Goat’s cheese & fig
Prawns in homemade Marie Rose sauce
Pulled pork & apple sauce
Soured cream & chives

You get the idea? Basically, almost anything goes with these quick, easy Homemade Crackers.

USE YOUR IMAGINATION

For my Homemade Crackers, so far I’ve stuck to squares and rectangles. But there’s no reason you can’t bring out your favourite cookie cutters for all manner of shapes. Just bring your scraps together and reuse as you would any other dough.

You can use your imagination and flavour the basic recipe however you like. Here’s a few ideas of things you could mix into the dough or just sprinkle over the top:

Cheese: see Homemade Cheese Crackers
Garlic
Fresh or dried herbs: see Rosemary Crackers
Smoked paprika
Coarse salt
Ground black or mixed peppercorns
Sun dried tomatoes
Olives

STORAGE

With a previous batch of Homemade Crackers, I was very disciplined. To find out how long they stayed fresh, I kept a few back. Every day or so I took one from the sealed plastic box I kept them in and ate it.

I’m happy to report that the batch made on 20th December were only just showing signs of being passed their best on day 17. They were fine to eat, but didn’t taste quite as fresh. Still, over two weeks shelf life is pretty good for a homemade cracker, I reckon.

The amounts shown in the recipe should be enough to fill four standard, shallow baking trays, so you’ll need to work with a quarter of the dough at a time. You can have a batch in the oven while you’re rolling out the next one.

If you don’t want that many crackers, then halve the ingredients or make the whole batch of dough and freeze part of it for another day. I’ve made these crackers from previously frozen dough and noticed no difference in quality.

What will you top your Homemade Crackers with or dip them into?

4.78 from 18 votes