Crackers

We're having friends over for lunch today, which means I get to splurge just a wee bit on the food budget. I'm serving a frugal muffin and soup main course, but the big to-do is the feta walnut pate I'll serve beforehand. I picked up the feta and fresh parsley, then headed for the cracker aisle. I've been trying to avoid buying snacky things, so it's been awhile since I've perused there. I was shocked at how expensive organic crackers were. There were a few conventional brands that were $3-$4 a box, but the organic crackers were $6 and up. With our frugal cooking lately, even $3 seems like a lot to spend on one item. My neighbor gave us some crackers a while back. She had made them while experimenting with different recipes to accomodate her daughters many allergies. I decided to give it a try myself.

I found a simple recipe on Allrecipes.com. This is a nice recipe website because you can read reviews by other users and see what modifications they made to the recipe. It's a very simple starter, and I decided to make them straight up this first time around. The dough is made from:

• 1 3/4 c. whole wheat flour
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup water

It's a very easy dough to work with. Once the dough is formed you roll it to approximately 1/8" thick. For the first batch, I laid a piece of parchment paper over my rolled out dough, and used a pizza cutter to make straight edges and trim the dough to fit the baking sheet. (The recipe instructions call for an ungreased cookie sheet, but I love my parchment paper!) I also used the pizza cutter to mark the lines for the crackers. You score the dough, but don't cut all the way through. Next use a fork to pierce a few vents into each cracker. Bake the crackers at 350 for 15-20 minutes. (About 18 minutes worked for me.) While my first batch was baking, I collected and rolled out the trimmings from my first batch to make a second batch. For this one I left the edges ragged so as not to waste any of the dough. My second batch turned out crispier. I think I may have gotten them a bit thinner with less dough to work with, so next time I'll probably seperate the dough into two before rolling it out. These are a very basic cracker, perfect for highlighting the intense flavor of the pate. They are also a great springboard for making any variety of crackers. You could try adding dried herbs, parmesan, cracked pepper, paprika, or any number of flavors. This box-worth of crackers probably cost less than $1 to make, and was quite simple. I may never buy crackers again!