Cheddar cheez crackers
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75+ one-inch cheese crackers
10 minutes
25 minutes
1 hour and 20 minutes
Ingredients:
- 170 grams cheddar cheese, shredded (6 ounces)
- 165 grams all-purpose flour (1 1/3 cup - might need an extra tablespoon if the dough is too wet or sticky)
- 43 grams cheddar cheese powder (1/3 cup)
- 6 grams salt (1 teaspoon)
- 16 grams turmeric (2 tablespoons -optional/important for color)
- 3 grams MSG (1/4 teaspoon - optional for flavor)
- 12 grams canola or vegetable oil (1 tablespoon)
- 114 grams ice water (1/2 cup)
Directions:
Add all ingredients in a large bowl and stir to combine well. Once there no longer seems to be any dry flour in the bowl, get rid of the spoon and knead on a lightly floured surface for around 5 minutes. You should be left with a ball of fairly smooth dough. You might have to lightly flour your surface again a time or two, but try not to add much extra flour.
Once the dough is fully combined and kneaded for 5 minutes, let it rest for 15-20 minutes.
After the dough has rested, dust it lightly with flour and roll it with a rolling pin until it's around 1/8 to 1/16 inch thick (less than 1/2 cm). Try to keep the dough in a rough rectangle.
Add the rolled out dough to a parchment lined sheet and pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees F (176 C).
Once your dough is fully rolled out and less than a quarter inch thick and placed on the parchment, you can cut the dough. Make marks on the dough for every inch or so all the way down the length of the dough. Use a knife or a pizza cutting wheel and cut all the way across the dough at each 1-inch interval. Do this in two perpendicular directions and you should have a bunch of 1-inch squares cut out of the dough.
With a toothpick or skewer, poke one hole in the middle of each square. This keeps the dough from puffing up too much and cooking unevenly.
Once the oven is pre-heated, bake for 25 minutes. Rotate the pan during the halfway point of baking for more even browning and baking.
When the 25 minutes are finished, you need to dry out the crackers. This must be done either on a cooling rack on the counter or in the oven while the oven is turned off and cooling.
If you want to dry the crackers out the best way, move all of your crackers off of the parchment lined sheet pan to a cooling rack and add the cooling rack back into the turned off oven to rest for 30 minutes while the oven cools and dries, crisping up the crackers.
After 30 minutes, remove the cooling racks from the oven and you can break all of the square crackers apart and eat them now or allow to cool further before packaging and storing in a cool place for a week or so.
Notes:
If you leave out the turmeric, you will have pale colored crackers that will still taste the same. If the orange color of cheez-its is important to you, you will need turmeric.
You can use any flavor of shredded cheese that you want. The cheddar powder will contribute enough cheddar cheese flavor to make these taste cheddary.
Also feel free to add cayenne or other spices to the mix if you want.