Monday, August 19, 2013

I don't know what they are, but they aren't crackers

You may have noticed I'm rather fond of carbohydrates. Pasta, bread, the occasional pastry.

I also like crackers. A lot. Especially with soup. Or cheese and fruit. Or a big glass of milk. The commercial ones are not, however, the healthiest thing on the grocery shelves. 

Not wanting to give them up, but thinking cutting out processed snacks is a good idea, I thought I'd try to make my own. 

As usual, when trying something new, I read a ton of recipes. Many of them involved butter and a food processor, but I came across a few that used olive oil as the fat.

Then I got a little more free-form than I usually do when trying something new.

So, a couple cups of flour, a teaspoon of baking soda, about a third cup of olive oil, 2/3 cup of water, the better part of a bunch of rosemary that had dried out in the fridge but was still plenty fragrant. I needed a little more liquid, so I threw in some chopped garlic in olive oil (yes, I buy chopped garlic by the jar sometimes). I had some grated parmesan that needed to be used up, so I threw that in, along with some pepper.

I had parchment paper in the house, so I didn't have to grease the pan. I rolled out the dough onto the parchment paper, ran the pizza cutter over it, poked holes in the little rectangles with a fork and put it in the oven at 400 degrees for about fifteen minutes.

The crackers poofed up in the oven and I took them out when they started to turn brown around the edged. They're not quite crunchy and there's too much pepper. They're more like tiny peppery biscuits.

They did go rather well with the tomato soup I had for lunch (Amy's, it's a little sweet). I think they might be okay with cheese. 

They don't crunch, but they're not a complete failure.

Another learning experience. 

And no trans fat.