Olive Oil Crackers

I decided to try my hand at crackers. Everyone told me to go buy them, they cost like 2 dollars and that’s not even on sale. But I’ve never made crackers and I felt the need so made them anyway. I found the recipe for these on 101 cookbooks. I changed it a little to fit what I have in my cupboard but it’s basically the same recipe.

I used

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1 ½ cups whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup warm water

⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil

random spices

Mix together the flour and salt. Then add in the water and olive oil. Mix the dough for 5 min on medium speed. She said you could mix it and then knead by hand, but what’s the point of living with your sister if you can’t steal the Kitchen Aid from time to time.

Break the dough into 12 semi equal pieces (no apparently I can’t count I made 10) and rub them with a little olive oil. Make them into little balls and put them on a plate. Cover the dough and let it rest for 30-60 minutes. I left mine for 60, I needed to go look up topping ideas on the internet and eat one of the left over cookies from the last post.

Preheat the oven to 450º. Flatten the dough and put it on the lightly dusted cookie sheet. You can dust the cookie sheet with flour or cornmeal. Cut the dough into the shape you want the crackers to be, add toppings and poke each cracker with a fork. Bake the crackers until they are light brown.

I tried a bunch of different flavors with mixed results.

1) Coarse salt: I know this seems like a safe bet but these were the worst of the bunch, completely inedible.

2) Parmesan and garlic: These were ok but kind of boring, though they would make really good croutons.

3, 5) Parmesan and Italian seasoning: These were pretty good, my third favorite. These are in the picture of the baked crackers on the cookies sheet,

4, 6, 8) Cinnamon and sugar: Amazing I made three of these, and still ended up with very few of them at the end. These are the ones in the picture at the top.

7) Cumin and cayenne pepper: Really, really hot but not a lot of flavor, though that could have been caused by my taste buds dying.

9, 10) Pumpkin pie spice and sugar: These were my second favorite they reminded me of the apple farm. Go easy on the pumpkin pie spice.

I would definitely make these again (or at least the sugar versions). I may try making one of the sugar versions for Jolene’s pumpkin dip next fall. I did rediscover that I’m not that fond of crackers. I like my carbs to be a little more substantial. I wanted to make them thicker and Liz kept reminding me that crackers are supposed to be crisp. Maybe I should try bread next time.