Crackers & Dips (2 page)

In a world of overprocessed snacks made increasingly less accessible by rising prices and less desirable because of their increased fat, sodium, and sugar content,
Crackers & Dips
will show you how to feed your snack cravings in a more delicious, healthful way, right from your very own kitchen.

TECHNIQUES FOR PERFECT CRACKER BAKING

For Good Baking, Measuring Accurately

Making crackers is easy, and it can be done with very few pieces of special equipment. That said, this is the part of the book where I’ll get up on a soapbox and tell you the one thing I think you absolutely must have in your kitchen: a digital scale.

I do give both volume (cups) and weight (in grams, which is more accurate than ounces) measurements for ingredients in this book, but I strongly recommend you forgo the measuring cups for a digital scale. Why? Because 1 cup of flour can weigh between 115 to 155 grams depending on how compacted the flour is, relative humidity of the room, and how you put the flour in the cup.

Use a scale, and you won’t have to worry about any of that, plus it’s loads easier to add ingredients to the mixing bowl by weight as you work than it is to spoon them into those little measuring cups. Most digital scales have a “tare” button, so you can place your mixing bowl on the scale, press “tare” and it will zero out the bowl’s weight. Then you can add the first ingredient, press tare, add the next ingredient, press tare, and so on, measuring all the ingredients in the same bowl without fussing with measuring cups. It makes baking easier, faster, and your results will more consistent. That’s why pro bakers use scales and why an increasing amount of baking books are written with weights. Digital scales cost from relatively inexpensive for a basic model to highway robbery for a needlessly high-tech version. At the right price, a digital scale is an investment you can afford.

So you want to get into the delicious, crispy, crunchy world of cracker baking and you don’t have a scale (yet)? You can measure the dry ingredients with measuring cups, but please follow this method: Fluff the dry ingredients in the bag or bin with a spoon, spoon the ingredient into the measuring cup until it is overflowing, and then, level the top with a butter knife. This procedure produces more consistent results than the “dip into the flour bin, scoop up the flour, and pour it into the mixing bowl” method.

Mixing and Working Ahead

For all the cracker recipes in this book, I offer the best method for mixing dough; for ease, I often use a food processor or stand mixer. Unless the machine method is absolutely the only way to proceed, I also offer an unplugged handmade method. In some
recipes, it doesn’t make sense to dirty an appliance and it’s just as easy to make the dough by hand. Such is the elemental simplicity of cracker making!

Once your dough is made, in many cases you can store it in the refrigerator for a few hours or up to a few days. I’ve indicated which crackers have good “do ahead doughs” in the instructions of the appropriate recipe. If you’re not a habitual baker, parsing out the cracker making process into two parts can make the process feel easier, and just like cookies, fresh-baked crackers taste better right out of the oven, so working ahead has its advantages.

Rolling—There’s More Than One Way To Thin A Cracker

The key to crackers with a crisp, crunchy texture is all in the rolling. Crackers that are too thick can break a tooth, ones that are rolled unevenly will bake unevenly, and crackers that are too thin will burn.

The very word rolling will conjure the image of a rolling pin in most minds. I do use a rolling pin for many of the crackers in this book, and later on we’ll go over keys to success using a rolling pin, but I’d also like to introduce you to some tools and tricks for getting evenly thin dough, and thereby crisp crackers, that you may not have thought of.

GETTING THE THICKNESS RIGHT

Before we get into the different ways to roll the dough, let’s talk about thickness. The thickness of your cracker dough will affect your baking times, cracker texture, and yields. That’s why it’s key to get your cracker dough the right thickness for each recipe. The most common measures for dough thickness in this book are
and ⅛ in/2 and 4 mm. To get a visual sense of what these measurements look like, pick up a penny. One U.S. cent is 0.0625 in/1.6 mm, or about
in/2 mm. To see what ⅛ in/4 mm looks like, stack two pennies.

Though the pennies give you a sense of what the appropriate thickness of dough looks like, it’s a good idea to invest in one of the nifty rolling guide gadgets on the market to ensure your dough is evenly thin and of a precise thickness. My favorite rolling guide is a set of inexpensive plastic strips called Perfection Strips, available at kitchenware stores and online. They come in three color-coded measures (black:
in/2 mm; white: ⅛ in/4 mm; and red: ¼ in/6 mm), and when placed on either side of your cracker dough, the strips will serve as a guide to help you roll the dough evenly to your chosen thickness.

Another option is a set of rubber bands of varying thickness that stretch right onto your standard rolling pin (they don’t work with tapered-end rolling pins); I like Regency’s Evendough bands. The one drawback to the bands is that it is possible to roll over the dough with the bands, leaving unsightly indentations in the dough.

Barring the gadgets, a straightedge ruler made of washable material is a great tool for measuring thickness, length, and width of the dough as you are rolling it out, but it won’t guarantee evenly rolled dough. I have a cheap, clear plastic ruler that lives in my gadget drawer and comes in handy nearly every time I’m making crackers.

ROLLING THE OLD FASHIONED WAY—WITH A PIN

The most obvious way to get your cracker dough into shape is to use a rolling pin. It’s an effective, no-nonsense way to get that cracker dough thin, and it gives you a feel for the dough, which goes a long way in making you a great cracker-baker.

Start with a lightly floured surface and rolling pin: rub a few pinches of flour into your rolling pin, and then fling a few more pinches over a clean work surface. Place the dough in the center of the floured area and roll from the center of the dough away from you. Next, place the rolling pin back in the center of the dough and roll toward you. Resist the urge to roll back and forth over the dough; it’s makes it difficult to get an even sheet of dough, and the back-and-forth motion actually toughens the dough.

After each complete stroke of the rolling pin, lift the dough and rotate and/or flip it to make sure it isn’t sticking. If you need to, add flour, but only enough to insure the dough isn’t sticking; adding too much flour will make the crackers overly dry. Keep rolling until the dough is the desired thickness.

In some cases where the dough has a well-developed gluten structure, the dough may spring back as your roll. If this happens, set the first bit of dough aside and start rolling out another piece of dough; the springy dough will relax after a few moments and will yield more easily.

Some of the higher-fat or wheat-free cracker recipes like Skinny Mint Chocolate Grahams (
page 96
) and Seeded Quinoa Crackers (
page 66
) have especially sticky doughs. In recipes like these, it’s best to roll the dough between a sheet of parchment paper and a sturdy piece of plastic wrap. The nonstick surfaces keep the dough
from sticking to the pin and the work surface, and it’s easier to roll without adding lots of extra flour, which can change the texture of the final cracker.

PASTA MAKER

Pasta makers are designed to thin out pasta dough using a double roller system that is adjusted to progressively thinner widths. These machines (either hand-crank or stand mixer attachments are available) produce evenly rolled dough that can be made at just about any thickness, from ¼ in/6 mm to paper-thin. These inexpensive machines make great pasta, but they’re also ideal for some sturdier cracker doughs as well. Using a pasta machine may seem daunting to the uninitiated, but it’s quite fun, and you get the hang of it quickly; I’ve taught children as young as 4 years old to use a pasta machine like an old pro.

1
. Break the cracker dough into manageable pieces (specified in each recipe where a pasta maker can be used). Shape the pieces into flattened disks and dust them with flour. Cover all but one disk loosely with plastic.

2
. Feed the disk of dough through the pasta maker on the widest setting (“1” on most models). Dust the dough lightly with flour again, fold it in half, and feed it through the rollers on the widest setting again; this will help smooth the dough.

3
. Adjust the pasta machine to the next setting (slightly thinner than the first). Fold the dough into the center of the piece of dough in thirds (as you would a letter), and feed the dough through the rollers with the open end leading, this will help make the edges cleaner on the ends, which is better for cutting neat-looking crackers.

4
. Continue to feed the dough through the machine once on each setting, adjusting the roller to the next-thinner setting each time until the dough is as thin as directed in the recipe. If the dough becomes too unwieldy and long to handle, cut the dough sheet into more manageable lengths. Repeat with the remaining dough and cut the crackers as directed in the recipe. Save the scraps, this kind of dough can be re-rolled a few times.

Pressing

Some round crackers like the Senbei (
page 39
) and Smoked Almond Thins (
page 62
) are easiest to make thin not by rolling, but by pressing. Simply make small balls of the given dough, place them one at a
time between sheets of heavy plastic (a zip-top bag works well), and press down on the dough: it will spread into an even, wafer-thin round with almost no effort. You can use the bottom of a flat-bottomed dish (I use a crème brûlée dish) or a large juice glass to manually press out the dough, or smash the dough balls in a tortilla press. No matter how you press them, this method makes cracker making a breeze.

Slicing