Another Look at Crackers

Yesterday, I wanted to make some crackers for a snack in my daughters' lunches. I went searching all over the Internet looking for just the right recipe. I settled on this recipe, but changed it quite a bit. Don't be intimidated by nutritional yeast. It's not the same as the bread rising sort of yeast. Nutritional yeast is golden in color and is usually flaked. It's also not the same as brewer's yeast. Nutritional yeast has a cheesy, nutty flavor to it and is great for seasoning and for making cheesy sauces. These crackers taste like a cross between Goldfish and Oyster crackers.

Nutritional Yeast is often sold in the bulk section of health food stores.

Homemade Crackers
adapted from Shmooed Food

What You Need:

• 2 3/4 cups unbleached flour
• 1/2 cup nutritional yeast flakes
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp onion salt
• a few shakes of cayenne pepper
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp dry mustard
• 1/2 cup cold olive oil
• 1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp ice water
• 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
• sea salt for topping, if desired

How it's Done:
Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Cover baking sheets with parchment paper.

Combine all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.

Slowly drizzle in the olive oil while stirring. Then, drizzle in the water and apple cider vinegar.
Form the dough into a ball. I found it easiest to form it into three balls and work with smaller pieces.

Roll the dough very thin -- under 1/8th of an inch. This is important, because the crackers will puff up substantially even this thinly rolled.

Cut as desired. I used some small cutters. You don't have to do that. You can use your pizza cutter to cut them into squares.

Place them on your baking sheet. 1/2" apart is plenty, as they don't expand.

Bake the crackers 10 to 12 minutes, or until browned. They will get crispier as they cool.
Repeat until all your dough is used. It's much harder to reroll "recycled" dough. It gets very stiff, so use as much of it as you can the first time around.