I cannot help myself with the bad jokes. 

Though crackers were not on my “make them yourself” list for this year, when I saw this recipe from thekitchn.com, I instantly added them. I don’t eat a lot of crackers, but this recipe was so easy I can see whipping up a quick batch of these for a party or to bring to a party or other things where you share food that are party-like in nature. (Or if you really like crackers just make them for yourself and pour some wine and eat all the damn crackers. I don’t judge.)

You can click the link for the recipe. The recipe lists out equipment for you and everything, just like I do. Nice, yes? I don’t have a rolling pin, so I just used a can of pears. No, really. Anything round with flat sides works!

I’ll walk you through the basic steps so you can see how things looked, and a few little hints and whatnot..

The dry ingredients are pretty straightforward: flour, sugar and salt. The wet ingredients are olive oil and water. The recipe calls for 2 teaspoons of salt, so to add a little something different I used 1 tsp regular sea salt and 1 tsp smoked sea salt. I think you could get creative about adding other flavors, too, if you wanted.

Once you add the liquid to the dry ingredients, everything comes together pretty fast. At first, it kinda looks like a shaggy mess…

But after I dumped it out on the (floured) counter and smooshed it together a little, it was easier to work with. The recipe says this is a no knead dough, which is true, but you will need to stick your hands in there and bring it all together. However, the nice thing about this dough is that it’s not sticky at all, thanks to the olive oil. You won’t be picking scraps of dough off your hands or your counter top.

The instructions say to divide the dough in half and just work with half at a time. I didn’t really want a huge batch of crackers, so I just wrapped the 2nd half up and stuck it in the freezer for another time.

As I mentioned, I used a can of pears in lieu of a rolling pin. It was a little harder that way, but not ridiculous. I was still able to get the dough pretty thin. If you’re in the same rolling pin-less predicament, just remember to rub the sides of whatever replacement tool you use with a little flour so nothing sticks to it. Regardless of what you’re using, you’ll want to roll from the center of the dough outward toward the edges. The dough in the middle is thicker, so following that method helps redistribute it evenly all the way to the edges.

Once you have your dough rolled out, a pizza cutter works nicely to cut the dough into crackers. Don’t worry about making perfect crackers. Just keep them all generally the same size. Remember, these are homemade, and it’s ok if they look like it. 

The original recipe provides a suggestion for how you top these crackers, but you could use just about anything. Keep it simple with some sea salt and/or cracked pepper, or pull out your favourite seasoning blend and use that. I used Za’Atar spice, which includes sesame seeds, sumac, cumin, thyme, oregano and marjoram in it. 

The instructions also tell you to prick each cracker with a fork. Don’t skip this step or your crackers will all puff up on you and will likely burn on top.

That 12 minutes in the oven goes by fast, and with the higher oven temp (450°) you probably want to stay close to the kitchen. A few of mine burned anyway, but that’s pretty par for the course for me and anything baking related. Most of them are fine, and they taste really good!

The entire process, from start to finish, took about 45 minutes, so this isn’t a labor intensive recipe at all. If I was a regular cracker eater, I can see making up a batch of these once a week without it becoming a pain in the butt. 

This is a recipe you can really customize to your own tastes, so give it a shot and have fun!