One Cent Crackers

Good With: Dips, cheese
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 5-7 minutes per batch (Recipe makes about 8 batches)
Cost: Can you guess?
Plundered from Alton Brown

Ever since I saw Alton Brown make what looked like incredible crackers with the greatest of ease, I’ve wanted to try it myself. Turns out, it was as easy as it looked on TV and the crackers were even better than I expected. Usually I like to tweak the recipes a bit more for the sake of originality, but in this case I’m glad I didn’t. Seriously, these are easy, just about perfect and ridiculously cheap to make. I don’t want to buy crackers anymore. In fact, I don’t think I’m going to.

Ingredients

Makes: 10 to 12 servings

5 oz whole-wheat flour (about 1 1/5 cup)
4 2/3 oz all-purpose flour (1 generous cup)
1/3 cup flax seeds
1/3 cup sesame seeds
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3 tbs olive oil
6 1/2 ozs water

Preparation Instructions

1. Stir together flours, seeds, salt and baking powder in a medium bowl.
2. Add oil and stir until combined.
3. Add the water and stir to create a dough.
4. Turn dough out on a lightly floured surface and knead 4 or 5 times.
5. Divide the dough in to 8 equal pieces, cover them with a tea towel and allow them to rest for 15 minutes.
6. Preheat oven to 350°.
7. Roll each piece of dough until thin. The Good Eats recipe calls for 1/16 of an inch for thin crackers, but I have no idea how thin ours were.
8. Place dough on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 4 minutes on one side, flip ‘em, then bake for 2 to 3 more minutes.  If your baking pans are big enough, you can cook two at a time.
9. Place on a cooling rack and repeat the process until you’ve got a stack of extra large crackers. Break in to desired sizes and store in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks if you can (ours lasted 6 days, and we are cracker eaters).

Yaaaaaaaaargh: Making your own crackers and having them taste pretty much perfect will make you feel cool. Also, feel free to experiment with different seeds. We tried salting a couple of our crackers before we put them in the oven and that worked well but the plain ones were probably better. Alone these crackers are great but pair them with a nice cheese and they are amazing.