Greetings, My Beautiful Lovelies: Introduction to Homemade Crackers

Hello and welcome back to my kitchen! I'm Emmy, and today we're going to make homemade crackers. A few of you have reached out to me requesting that I share this recipe due to supply chain shortages in your area of the woods. Well, I'm happy to oblige because I've noticed a similar trend here in my neck of the woods. There have been holes on the shelves, and some products have been missing for quite some time. However, I'm thrilled to report that cream cheese has reappeared on our dairy shelves, which is just great! Not everyone has been so fortunate, with others sharing their own experiences of facing cracker shortages. All different kinds of crackers are in short supply, but we're going to make a simple plain soda cracker, or saltines, today.

The Joy of Saltines: A Global Favorite

Saltines are the square crackers that are light and airy, with a very plain taste to them. You dip them into your soup, have them with a little bit of cheese, or smear them with a little bit of peanut butter. They come in sleeves in a four-pack, which is probably what most of you know as saltine crackers. However, I've also heard that other people call them soda crackers, but they're pretty ubiquitous, and you can find this plain version of a cracker all over the world. For me, it's the crunch that I love so much, that little bit of salt on top. We've all been there when we open a sleeve and let it sit for a couple of days; sometimes, even if it's been a humid day, they just don't have that really light crunch anymore.

Homemade Crackers: A Solution to the Shortage

If you're one of those people who can't find saltines on their shelves, you can make them for yourself. I'll be using a recipe I found from restlesschipotle.com, and I'll put a link down below in case you're interested. According to this recipe, I should be able to prepare these crackers in about half an hour with very minimal ingredients, probably ingredients that you already have at home. It's about five or six ingredients if you include the salt. While I'm opting for a very plain cracker today, feel free to add cheese, black pepper, herbs, and spices to make these crackers your own.

The Perfect Ingredients

Behind me, my oven is preheated at 325 degrees, ready to go. Now, let's get started! In a large bowl, I'm going to measure out four cups of plain all-purpose flour. Isn't it great? I found this at a thrift store; it just popped open because I'd knocked the latch, and it says The Fresh-O-Lator on it. It's the selling point for me right there – old vintage stuff like this is my thing! And now that we have our ingredients measured out, let's proceed with the recipe.

Preparing the Dough

I'm going to add four cups of flour into my bowl, followed by two teaspoons of salt and a quarter teaspoon of baking powder. Now, I'll be mixing all these dry ingredients together until they're well combined. Next, I'll be adding three quarters cup of cold water to form a dough. As I mix the dough, it will start to come together; if you find that it's too sticky, you can add a little bit more flour. If you find that it's too dry, you can add a few drops of water. Once we have our dough ready, let's shape it into a rectangle and roll it out until it reaches about half-inch thickness.

Cutting the Crackers

Now, it's time to cut our crackers! Using a sharp knife or pastry cutter, I'll be cutting the dough into long, thin strips that are approximately one inch wide. You can make them as uniform as possible if you like, but I'm going for more rustic here today. Once we have all our strips cut out, let's proceed to baking.

Baking the Crackers

Behind me, my oven is ready and set at 325 degrees. Now, it's time to bake our crackers! In a single layer, I'll be placing the strips of dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. It's essential to make sure they're not overlapping each other since we want them to retain that light crunch. Now, into the oven they go for about 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Keep an eye on them after ten minutes; if they start to get too dark, remove them from the oven immediately.

The Finished Crackers

Once our crackers are done baking, I'll let them cool completely before removing them from the parchment paper and placing them onto a wire rack to dry further. This is the moment of truth – will we have successfully made homemade crackers that match the ones we've grown to love? Let's find out!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en(Emmy vocalizing)- Okay, do I have everything?Do I have everything?I think I do.I think.And if we don't, that's okay,because we're gonna goahead and get started.(happy upbeat music)Greetings, my beautifullovelies, it's Emmy.How are you?It's great to see you, andwelcome back to my kitchen.Today, I'm gonna bemaking homemade crackers.A few of you have gotten in touch with merequesting that I make homemade crackersdue to supply chain shortagesin your area of the woods.So in my area,I have noticed that there havebeen holes on the shelves.Some products have been missing,and that's sort of been thecase for the last few months.For a little while, it was cream cheesebut I am happy to say,cream cheese has reappearedon our dairy shelves.At least on our neck of the woods.Other people were happy to tell methat they had no shortageof cream cheese whatsoever,which is just great.And others have said they toohad cream cheese shortages.And now, I have heard thatthere are cracker shortages.All different kinds of crackers.And I'm here to make a verysimple plain soda cracker,or saltines.I don't know what you callthem, depending where you live.I happen to call them saltines.They are the square crackersthat are light and airy;have a very plain taste to them.You dip them into your soup.You have them with a little bit of cheese;you smear 'em with a littlebit of peanut butter.They come in sleeves in a four pack.I think most of you may knowwhat a saltine cracker is --although you may not call it that.Apparently, other peoplecall it soda crackers,but they're pretty ubiquitous.I think pretty much all over the world,you can find this plainversion of a cracker.For me, it is the crunchthat I love so much,that little bit of salt on top.We, I think most of us,know what it's like to eata stale cracker.And it's just not quite the same.You know when you've opened thesleeve and you've let it sitparticularly if it's been a humid dayand a couple days later, you go backfor those little crackersand they're just a little bit,they don't have that really light crunch.Yes.Well, I am gonna be attemptingto try to make homemade crackers.For those of you that don'thave crackers on your shelves,you can make them for yourself.I'll be using a recipethat I found from restlesschipotle.comand I'll put a link downbelow to the originalin case you are interested.Alrighty, let's go ahead and get started.Behind me, I have my ovenpreheated at 325 degrees.Now, according to this recipe,I should be able to prepare these crackersin about a half an hourwith very minimal ingredients,probably ingredients you already have.Win-win.And it's about five or six ingredients,six ingredients if you include the salt.Now I am opting to gofor a very plain cracker,but if you wanna add cheese,if you wanna add black pepper,if you wanna add any herbs and spices,feel free to do that andmake these crackers your own.But I'm just going for the run of the millplain cracker today.So in a large bowl, I'mgoing to measure outfour cups of plain all purpose flour.Look at this container.Isn't it great?I found this at a thrift store.It just popped open 'causeI'd knocked the latch,and it is a CommunityKitchen's Fresh-O-Lator.Look at that.Can you see that?It says The Fresh-O-Lator.Isn't that cool?I love old vintage stuff like this.And this is the selling point for me:right here, on this latch, right there,it says, \"press it down here\".Can you see that?It's so cool.It's like etched in here.Apparently this was used to hold coffee --and, listen to this:(sound of lid popping open)It has a little gasket on the inside here,so it keeps moisture out.This is a super tight fit.(latch clicks)That latch is just such a pleasure.Alrighty.Now that I've showedyou my flour container,I'm gonna measure out four cups.Now, the reason why I likea nice, wide containerfor my flour is that I can actuallyput my measuring cup in there.So I learned from King Arthur Flourthat this is the correct wayto measure out your flour.Like this.Oops.You sprinkle the flour intothe measuring containerand slide off the topso it's nice and even.In my opinion, the bestway to measure out flouris by weight.But we're not doing it by weight today,because the recipe callsfor volumetric measure.So that's what we're doing.Alrighty, four cups offlour into our bowl.And to that, we'regoing to add our butter.This is butter out of the refrigerator.And if you have a pastryblender, feel free to use it.I don't.So I'm just using thislittle bench scraperto cut the butter in initiallyand chop it up into small pieces.And then I'm just gonna use my handsto crumble the butter in until itkind of corn meal in consistency.Kind of like we're making a pie crest.Think at this point,I'm gonna go in with my handsand start squeezing thisand getting that butter incorporated.This is gonna add a ton of flavor.I don't have a pack of saltinecrackers in front of me.So I don't know if theycontain any butter.I imagine they don't.They don't tasteparticularly buttery to me.In my opinion, they justtaste kind of flaky and saltyand plain, just plain crackers.But this recipe calls for butter.So I'm guessing these aregonna be a little bit tastier.See?Never fails.Wearing something dark while I'm baking.And I'm pushing up my glasses.Speaking of glasses, these glassescome from glassesusa.com.Many of you ask where I get my glassesand that's where these are from.So I'll put a link down belowin case you're interested.Alrighty, keep cutting these in.I actually have a little.....because I don't havemuch of a nose bridge,I found these great little,what would you call them?I don't know --rubbery doohickeys thatI can put on the endsof the glasses, the arms of the glasses,I think is the technicalword, and they kind of gripbehind your ear so that when you look downor move your head around a lot,your glasses don't slide off your nose.Isn't that great?So I don't have a pairput on these glasses yet,although these don't seemto need them that badly.Although the summertime is the worst,like when my nose is a little bit sweaty.Okay, this is all a little bit TMI.Sorry.Okay, back to kneading this.Crumble crumble crumble.So to give this a little bit of lift,we're gonna add one tablespoonof baking powder to this,and now we're gonna add ourmilk and form this into a dough.And get our impeccably clean hand in thereand work this into a dough.Now this recipe says itmakes about 36 crackers,but of course that'sgonna depend on the sizeof your crackers.I'm gonna go for the,you know, square shape...of the saltine.So we're just gonna knead this.We're not necessarily tryingto develop any gluten here.We're not making bread.We just wanna get theflour and milk incorporatedto form a dough.Alrighty.We have our dough hereand to make things a littlebit easier on ourselves,we're gonna divide this into quarters.Divide this into quarters.And then reserve therest of this for later.That will make it a littlebit more manageable.Now, at this point, we can roll this out.Nice and thinly.Now I'm gonna try to keepthis as a rectangle if I can.And dust it with flour as weknead so that it doesn't stick.But as of now, I don'tthink I'm gonna need it.Now, if you're having a hardtime rolling out your dough,you might just wanna letit rest a little bit.The gluten or the protein in the floursometimes needs a littlebit of time to relax.And with that time, thewill hold it shape better,rather than kind ofwanting to shrink back.So the thinner we make our dough,the thinner of course ourcrackers are gonna be,but more importantly, they'llbe nice and crisp and light.So I'm gonna try to get this pretty thin.Now when I was making a hardtack,this wasn't as importantbecause we wanted the opposite,rather than having a flaky fall apart,crusty crispy cracker,we wanted something thatwas thick and substantial.I'm gonna be using thislittle fluted cutter.It looks like a pizza cutter,but it's got these nice little ridgesso that it'll give us anice little pretty pattern.And I'll use a ruler for a straight edge.So I'm gonna straightenthis edge off here.Ooh, I've never used this tool before.Very nice.Like that.Voop!Cute!That makes such a nice sound.(tongue trilling)I like that.Ooh, yeah, I like that, like that.And then another two and a half inches.Bloop.There's no need to measure here.I'm just being a little extra.So feel free to makethese nice and rectangularor odd shaped.You know?Don't have to do this.There it is.It almost looks like aravioli with no -oli, right?Okay.Now I'm gonna place that ontoan ungreased cookie sheet,and then I'm gonna do thatfor the rest of these.I'll be right back.Okay.Now I'm gonna grab a fork andwe're going to prick the doughAnd this is going tohelp keep the crackersfrom rising too much in the oven.Can you see that?We wanna keep our crackers nice and flat.And I am doing a total ofeight little prick points.See that?Cool.Now we need to attach our salt.And what we're gonnado is make an egg wash.We're just using the white.So separate our yolk, whichwe'll put to good use.And then add about ateaspoon of water to that.(metal clanking)Sorry for the noise.Then, I've got some salt here,just plain old, kosher salt.And I'm going to brush each crackerwith a little bit of egg white.And sprinkle it with some salt.And then we're gonna pop theseinto a preheated 325 degree ovenand bake for 15 to 20 minutes,but start checking them around 10 minutes.And once they start to goldenand look nice and crispywe'll pull 'em out and allowthem to cool completelybefore we taste them.It's important to allowthem to cool completely,because that allows themto get nice and crispy.Alrighty, I'll see you whenall these are nicely bakedand we'll give these a taste.Okay.See you a little bit.Alrighty, my lovelies.My crackers are complete.I baked them for about 17 minutes.And even though I pricked them beforehand,a couple of them still kind of poofed up:that one back there, and thenthis one right in the corner.Looks a little bit like a turnover,but there are my finished crackers.I baked them in two different batches.The first batch was a littlebit lighter than the second.We'll see how that affects the color.And these are the little scrapsthat I cut up and thenbaked these as well.These were super cute.Loved how these turned out.Kind of like a homemadeversion of an oyster cracker.A little bit more golden though.And, as you can hear, they sound crispy.(Emmy giggles)Those ones are so cute.I love those.Alrighty. So let's give oneof the big ones a taste.I'm gonna taste this one first.This is a lighter version here.This is a bit more of the colorof the typical saltine crackerthat you would buy in the sleeve.And after I baked them,these are a little bit large,I would say.If you want them to be moresaltine cracker in size,I'd say more like twoinches by two inches square.But still, pretty close.Let's crack it open and seewhat the texture's like.Alrighty, I hope this is crispy.Here we go.Mm.Not quite.So, it cracked on the top,but the bottom didn't havethat nice kind of shatteringlylike thin crust that Iassociate with a saltine.Let's break it again.Yeah, doesn't have that big snap.But the inside looks pretty good.Alrighty, let's give that a taste.Here we go.Itadakimasu.Hmm, nope.That definitely needed,needs to be baked longer.It's a little bit doughy at the bottom.The taste is pretty good,very kind of neutral, plain...taste to it.Very similar to a saltine,but slightly buttery.I think the salt level was pretty good.Make sure you add enough salt,because these are saltines,these soda crackers....But this definitely isa little underbaked.Now this was the firsttime, for me, this recipe.The first time I baked it,this was the first batch.So I wasn't sure howlong to cook these for.It said anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes.I did 17 minutes.The second batch I did a little bit longerto get a little bit more of a golden colorand let's try one of those.For example, this one right here.That one has more of a golden color to itand it feels lighter.So let's break this one.Here we go.Oh, this one too, has a slightlykind of doughy interior,but the flakiness looks good.All right, let's try that one.(cracker crunching)Mhmm.That one's definitely better.I think this recipe does apretty good job in capturingthat saltine flavor.Kind of just plain flourybland greatness of a saltine,with a little bit of butterin it, which is very welcomed.Just, the texture's not quite right.And this was definitely baked long enough.Perhaps, I needed toroll these out thinner.These do look a little bit thick.So, this one looks pretty good.Let's try that one.Yeah.So initially the crunch looks good,but I think -- see how it'skind of bready at the bottom?Hmm.Again, good flavor, buttexture's not quite right.Let's try the little ones.Look at these.These look really crispy andthey sound really crispy.Let's try one of those.Here we go.(cracker crunching)Yes.100% yes.Mhmm.So, those have a nice littlenutty toasted flavor to them.The texture is much more cracker-like,although not quite like a saltine.When I imagine saltine soda cracker,I imagine one that's reallyflaky and crumbly and thin.Not thin, but like alayered kind of flakiness.These are more of like a biscuit.What I, American-style biscuit. (laughs)Kind of like that style of cookie biscuitwhere it's a little bitmore like the hardtackI was talking about earlier.A little more solid.Kind of a little bitlike an animal cracker.Some of those animal crackershave a little bit moredensity to them and that'swhat these are like,but this definitely hasa crunch of a cracker.Mhmm.And the dryness, while the bigger sizeseem a little bit wet still.And these were baked rightalongside the larger ones.This was the second batch.I baked these for 18minutes at 325 degrees.All ovens are gonna bea little bit different.If you have a convectionoven, you're gonna reduce thatdown to 300 and bakethem as opposed to 325.So moral of the story hereis I think the smallersize crackers worked betterin terms of getting thatreally great crisp texture.The flavor is pretty good,very plain cracker texture.Isn't quite the texture of a saltine.Having said that,I think this would bea great cracker to havealong with the soup or witha little bit of cheese.I think it's all aboutperfecting the proper size.If I were to do this again, Ithink I would try baking themon a rack so that the air canget underneath the cracker.And they're less likelyto be soggy on the bottom.Or roll these out thinnerand see if you get a morecrisper cracker that way.Definitely think that would be the case.That's just gonna takea little bit more time.Alrighty, my lovelies, there you have it.That's how you can make homemade crackers.It's definitely possible.It's not hard.I think it's just a matterof finding the right timeand temperature in your oven,and the correct thickness of your dough.Very, very thin.Thinner than I had done it,if you really wanna really crisp cracker,which I thought was pretty thin already.Also, the recipe saidnot to grease your pan.I would go ahead and set your crackersonto a piece of parchment paper,which I did for my second batch,because my first batch didwanna stick just a little bit.I mean, it wasn't enough to break anyof the crackers when I removed them,but there was some hesitation.So just put a littlepiece of parchment there.I think if you were to addbutter or something to greasethe actual pan, it mightaffect the browning.It might make these a littlebit darker than you might want.So yeah, those are my tips and yeah,you can make yourselfhomemade crackers at home.Mm.You could also dust these withcheesy powder, black pepper.Ooh, I think adding black pepperto the actual dough would be lovelyor just a little bit ofParmesan cheese if you like,or you know, herb 'em up however you wantor you could actually put somecheese in the dough itselfto make your own cheesy crackers.I've seen some recipes for cheese strawsand things like that.Didn't wanna do that with this onebecause I just wanted a plain cracker.Alrighty, my lovelies.Thanks so much for watching.I hope you enjoyed that one.I hope you learned something.Please share this video with your friends.Follow me on social media.Like this video, subscribe,and I shall see you in the next one.Toodaloo, take care.Bye!(upbeat music)Let's see if I can catch it.Yeah!\n"