cheese crackers

These are the best crackers in the world. No brag, just fact. If you like cheese crackers -- and who in their right mind doesn't? -- then you'll love these. (I have a friend who's not in his right mind. He once stated flatly, referring to Cheese Its, "nobody likes those." Oof. That was the day it was confirmed that I pal around with babbling idiots. The remark delivered orbiter dicta hit me with the force of a body-blow, and challenged me to reassess my entire associative life.)

* 1 cup chickpea flour * 1 cup whole wheat flour * 1 cup A/P flour * 2 measured teaspoons baking powder, optional, but I wanted these crackers to be light. They are. I could have maybe even gone 3 level teaspoons. * 4 oz sharp cheddar cheese * 2 oz Parmigiano Reggiano * 4 oz butter So this batch is a very short dough. That means it contains a lot of fat. We like fat. We're all for it. * 1/2 cup heavy cream (it's all I had on hand) * 3/4 approx. milk, sufficient for the processor to bring the dough to a ball that banged around the processing bowl. The dough was divided into three sections. The trim was reprocessed with a touch more milk and and rolled out. That amounted to four trays exactly. Except the last tray also had trims. That tiny amount remaining was also rolled out with no concern for it being in the shape of a square. It made about 1/4 to 1/3 of a tray. 400˚F / 200˚C for 10 minutes The main thing to understand is that all these ingredients, their amounts, temperature, and time are fungible. Swap out any liquid, any fat (you can even omit fat), baking powder (omit if you wish) and grain, as I have here, swapped legume for grain, and whole wheat for A/P, cream and milk for water. That book that I mentioned earlier down there ↓ in a previous post, the one that I can not recommend bothering with, instructs to bake everything at 350˚ / 175˚C, which is too low to suite me. On the the other hand, if I were to roll them more thickly then I'd probably want to give them more time to dehydrate. Incidentally, the book was written before Silpat silicone baking mats were available, and it doesn't mention parchment paper, either of which I would deem indispensable. It also instructs to cut each cracker then lift it to a baking tray, which is patently ridiculous. Score the entire sheet, then slide it onto the baking sheet using the parchment or the Silpat. Then break apart the baked sheet along the scores. See? A little common sense goes a long way. It's hard to believe those authors made all those crackers without discovering a few baker's techniques. Oh, yeah, the dough. Purdy, innit?

provolone cheese crackers

This turned out to be a particularly good batch of cheese crackers. By using good cheese, how could you go wrong?

My original idea was to substitute Maytag blue cheese for butter, but that appeared not to work so well, the dough failed to look like proper dough before adding water to bring it together, so I added a few daubs of butter. Butter tends to soften the final cracker, so I held back on my impulse to use a lot. The amount of dough was determined by the amount of cheese, the size of the pile within the blender. I estimated an equal amount of flour and let 'er rip. That's when I decided it really did need some butter. Then water drizzled in until it pulled together. That turned out to be a little too wet so I floured the working surface heavily. The dough took up approximately 1/2 cup of flour as it was being rolled. Cut to the size of a pre-cut sheet of parchment paper. Transfered to the paper and cut into separate crackers, then docked. Oh blast! I forgot to press in sea salt or kosher salt. No matter, the cheese is plenty salty to satisfy any salt lust.

* mostly provolone cheese grated in Cuisinart.
* a chunk of some unidentified semi-hard white cheese, probably Romano
* 1.5 cups flour added and blade replaced from grater to chopper
* about 2 oz of Maytag cheese added into cheese/flour mixture and blended
* water drizzled until dough came together and rolled around the blender bowl.
* baked at 400℉ on second to top rack of oven for 11 minutes.