Crackers - dry and crispy cookies with holes - appeared as a result of a mistake by an English confectioner who overcooked biscuits in the oven. Slightly burnt cookies broke with a loud crack, so they were called crackers from the word crack, which translates as “crack.” This happened at the end of the 19th century, and a new type of confectionery surprisingly took root in European cuisine. Soon, crackers became part of the army ration - they were stored for a long time, perfectly satisfied hunger, took up little space and were very light in weight.
What's good about crackers?
Experimenting with crackers is a real pleasure, the main thing is to understand the basic technology of their preparation. Delicious cookies can be taken with you on trips - they help pass the time on the road, calm children and make life more enjoyable. And with original cookie cutters from the company, making crackers is even easier and tastier! Treat your guests to unusual crackers, and they will definitely ask for more! It’s probably no coincidence that a couple of centuries ago an English pastry chef overcooked biscuits in the oven. What would we do without crackers? By the way, store them in a tightly closed glass jar - this way they will remain fresh for a long time to the delight of home gourmets!
That day, when our family came home, they noticed that we smelled like cheese! Of course, today they are baking spiced cheese crackers!
These are amazing baked goods! The crackers taste good, the structure is moderately brittle, somewhat layered.
If you take natural products, high-quality butter and cheese, then, yes, it’s an expensive pleasure, but it’s worth it!
For spices, I used ground paprika and asafoetida. I can also recommend Italian or Provencal herbs, they are wonderful in such dishes, oregano is especially good!
Grind the butter into crumbs together with flour.
Add fine salt, finely grated cheese, and spices.
Gently mix the dough, first combining the crumbs and cheese without effort, and then pressing the products together. This way you can mix them all evenly, avoiding lumps. Add ice water little by little and knead into a soft dough. Place it in the refrigerator for 30-40 minutes.
Roll out the dough into a thin layer (3-4 mm), randomly cut the dough into pieces or squeeze out the crackers using shaped molds.
Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Make a few pricks with a fork.
Real cheese crackers can be easily made at home if you have the necessary ingredients on hand. They turn out so crispy and crumbly that they simply crumble in your hands and at the same time have a pronounced cheese flavor. Crackers are made from shortcrust pastry, so for those on a diet, such baked goods are contraindicated due to their calorie content.
The bright and funny look of the ruddy baked goods will not leave children indifferent - they will be happy to taste it and ask for more, so double the portions if there are little fidgets in your family.
Ingredients
- 150 g hard cheese
- 100 g butter
- 1 yolk
- 300-400 g wheat flour
- salt to taste
Preparation
1. To make crackers, prepare shortbread dough. Some cooks chop the butter together with the flour and then just add the rest of the ingredients, but this process is very long and tedious. It is much easier to simply melt the butter to room temperature in a water bath or in the microwave.
2. Then add 1/3 of the wheat flour into it and knead into a thin dough.
3. Add chicken yolk to it, being careful not to accidentally add protein to the dough - it will only add airiness to the baked goods, and we do not need this at all.
4. Add salt and finely grate the hard cheese directly into the container.
5. Mix everything, add the remaining flour and knead into a thick shortbread dough.
6. Carefully spread it over the board, or even better, immediately on parchment paper, forming a wide circle about 0.5 cm thick. Cut the cheese circle into 8 pieces with a pizza cutter.
7. Poke small holes in each piece with a straw so that your cracker looks like pieces of cheese.
8. Bake the dough pieces in the oven for about 20-25 minutes until golden brown - don’t hold them any longer, as the cracker burns very quickly. Remove the pan from the oven and allow the hot baked goods to cool so that you can fully enjoy the cheesy flavors in them.
Serve crackers with a cup of aromatic.
Note to the hostess
1. Separate the yolk from the white over two empty bowls. Firstly, this will prevent unwanted components from getting into the dough, and secondly, thanks to this, you will be able to visually and smell identify a not-too-fresh egg before it spoils the rest of the products.
2. Do not put a lot of salt in the cheese crackers that children will enjoy. If the baked goods are supposed to be served with beer, the dough can be well salted.
3. Dry cookies prepared according to the recommended recipe are a good basis for canapés. They replace croutons and tartlets. It is better to make miniature snack sandwiches with a savory appetizer: herring or caviar butter, foie gras and galantines, any fish caviar, with poached quail eggs.
4. Choosing a basic component seems to be an easy task: stores offer hard cheeses with any qualities that meet consumer needs: sharp and bland, expensive and cheap. This last circumstance contains a catch: only cheese products have attractive price tags, but for real ones the cost is always high, because their production is a technologically complex and lengthy process. Domestic and Baltic ones are more accessible than French and German ones, and in baked goods the difference between them is leveled out.
Weightless, porous inside, with a characteristic creamy-cheese taste, the crackers are suitable for first courses, tea or coffee, cool beer and as a snack that is easy to pack and convenient to take with you for a walk, work or lecture. Depending on the cheese chosen, the aroma of the baked goods changes. It is important to use only hard cheeses. So, spicy or with a pronounced “flavor” are for lovers of piquant taste, and neutral varieties with a mild smell will be more popular with children.
If desired, the cracker with cheese can be diversified with rosemary, cumin, paprika cubes, a mixture of peppers and other dried additives, sprinkled on top 2-3 minutes before the end of the process. This simplest recipe, which does not require introducing yeast or baking powder, is the basis for experimenting with fragile, thin and crumbly baked goods.
Ingredients To make crackers with cheese:
- wheat flour – 120 g
- hard cheese – 100 g
- butter – 100 g
- egg yolk – 1 pc.
Recipe crackers with cheese:
Chop the cooled butter and mix with flour.
Grate the cheese into medium-sized shavings.
Transfer the cheese to the main mass. Add egg yolk.
Knead an “obedient” and plastic dough, roll it into a ball and, wrapping it in cling film, refrigerate for half an hour.
Roll out the cold dough on a floured board into a round layer 3-4 mm thick, cut into segments of the desired size.
Cut holes in each piece using, for example, a cocktail straw.
Place the future cheese crackers on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, keeping a distance of about ½-1 cm. Bake for about 10-15 minutes, preheating the oven to 180 degrees.
Baked cheese crackers literally slide on the parchment and are easily removed from the paper surface. They cool very quickly and after 2-3 minutes they are ready for crunch lovers to eat. Crackers with cheese are ready!
Bon appetit!
If you have a high-speed blender at your disposal, then use it, otherwise you can do it with an ordinary knife. However, in our case it turned out that a cutting board paired with a special knife is ideal for chopping butter and flour.
The technology for preparing crackers differs from the technology for kneading shortcrust pastry only in the presence of cheese in the composition; otherwise, the same rules should be followed: all components and necessary equipment must be cold. Ideally, place the cold butter, water and knife in the freezer 10 minutes before you start cooking.
Process the butter and flour into fine crumbs. If the cheese is not salty enough, add a pinch of salt to the flour at this stage. You can add your favorite dried herbs and spices.
Add your favorite hard cheese to the butter crumbs, after finely grating it. Chop all the ingredients together again.
Pour the crumbs onto a work surface and add no more than a couple tablespoons of ice water. It will help combine the ingredients.
Wrap the dough in cling film and leave in the refrigerator for 20 minutes.
Roll out the rested dough into a layer about 3 mm thick. Using a knife or a special cutter, cut out the crackers.
Discard excess dough, gather it together, roll it out and cut again. Repeat until you have used up all the dough.
Place the crackers on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake at 170°C for 12–15 minutes.
Ingredients:
- 120 g flour;
- 200 g hard cheese;
- 2 tablespoons cold water;
- 60 g butter.
Preparation
- Using a knife, turn the flour and butter into crumbs.
- Add cheese and chop all ingredients again.
- Pour in cold water and gather the dough into a ball. Wrap it in film and leave it in the refrigerator for 20 minutes.
- Roll out the dough into a layer 3 mm thick and cut.
- Bake the crackers at 170°C for 12–15 minutes.