Crab Cooker Soup Crackers

We have a family favorite restaurant in Newport beach called The Crab Cooker. We love to stop by for take-out bowls of clam chowder and their homemade soup crackers. Not very much like the typical delicate oyster crackers, the Crab Cooker crackers are more like big shooter-sized crunchy balls. I wondered how difficult it would be to make them.

Last week I made a batch with relative success. I was making a batch of breadsticks and thought I would experiment with the dough. I rolled some of the dough in to marble-sized pieces and let them rise a bit with the breadsticks. I baked them for the same amount of time as the bread, giving the pan a nice shake to roll them around halfway through, and it didn't seem too long.

They were nice and crunchy and a bit hollow in the middle for some give.

We ate them with my mom's homemade clam chowder. (Mom's recipe is a "New England" clam chowder, or a cream-based chowder, though the Crab Cooker serves Manhattan style clam chowder which is tomato-based.)

Have I ever mentioned how much we love food in our house?

Thin Wheat Crackers

I am a snack-y type person. There are times I'm just in the mood to snack on something. Preferably something light and crunchy.

I've always been curious about making my own crackers. It was one of those things I just thought I had to rely on the grocery store for. And I thought that if you were going to make homemade crackers then the only thing that would make the effort worth it would be to make a ton at once (making it take a long time). I was pleasantly surprised to find it was fast and easy to whip up a batch of these homemade crackers. It sounds a little nuts--but I highly suggest giving cracker-making a try sometime.

This is another example of a recipe that is trying to closely mimic a store brand. These tasted right on. Now I'm curious to see if I can adapt the recipe to make the sundried tomato and basil version I've had from the store as well-yumm!

Homemade Thin Wheat Crackers Recipe:

In a medium bowl, whisk together:

3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
2 T. brown sugar
2 T sesame seeds optional

Add these to the ingredients in your bowl:
1/2 cup buttermilk
3 T. oil or melted butter

Stir together to make a soft dough. It will be very soft and sticky. It should be stirred just until the flour is all absorbed, but not kneaded. Once it’s all incorporated, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let sit for about 10 minutes. This lets the whole wheat flour absorb all the liquid.

Divide the dough in half. Grease the bottom side of two sheet pans or use a silicon liner. Plop half of the dough on one sheet pan. Place a piece of saran wrap over the dough and begin rolling with a rolling pin. Roll to cover the sheet pan entirely.

Use a pizza cutter to score the dough into cracker squares. Then sprinkle the dough with a generous sprinkling of salt, and if desired, sprinkle it with some sesame seeds or garlic salt, onion salt, etc.

Bake at 350 for 14-15 minutes or until golden brown and crisp.