Over the Win­ter I lost my cook­ing and bak­ing mojo. I don’t know why but I just didn’t feel like doing any new recipes or even to play with old stand-bys.  Instead I kept pulling out old favorites and doing what I love, what makes me feel all warm & cozy inside. One of which is home­made Parme­san Crackers.

Some­thing about a fresh cracker. The first bite that melts in your mouth after the hard crust fades. The ease at which I could eat an entire bowl. The shuf­fling of my hand into the bot­tom of the bowl hop­ing to pull out just one more.  It is pure com­fort any day or time of the year.

What You Need:

1 Cup Parmigiano-Reggiano Cheese

1 Cup All-Purpose Flour

1/2 Tea­spoon Salt

1/2 Tea­spoon Fresh Ground Pepper

8 Table­spoons Unsalted But­ter {cut into indi­vid­ual tablespoons}

Ice Water

Optional: 1/2 Tea­spoon of one of the fol­low­ing: Paprika, Basil, Thyme, Cayenne Pep­per or Rosemary

adapted recipe from Essen­tial New York Times Cookbook

How To Put It Together

Grate your cheese finely if you are using a block (you can also cheat and use the kind you find already shred­ded or even pul­ver­ized, no one is going to know or judge you trust me) and place in either a mixer or food proces­sor or heck do it the old fash­ioned way when peo­ple had to you know, use their hands. I know how insane!

Slowly add flour, salt, and pep­per to the cheese.  If you decide to add an addi­tional spice for fla­vor, add that in now. Stir to blend.

Now add in one table­spoon of but­ter {I find it is eas­ier to cut each table­spoon into fours then toss those in} at a time until dough is crumbly. Basi­cally you are cut­ting the but­ter in like you would do with biscuits.

Slowly driz­zle about 4 table­spoons of ice water into dough while mix­ing. Do it one at a time. Because you will want to stop once the dough is moist enough to be formed into a ball. Do not over do the ice water. Slowly but surely wins the race.  If you need another table­spoon you can always slowly add it, although 4 seems to do the trick usually.

Now place the dough on parch­ment paper, wrap the ball in the parch­ment paper and place in the freezer for 30 min­utes to harden or in your refrig­er­a­tor for an hour.

Take out your dough and roll between two pieces of parch­ment until it is 1/8 inch thick.  Mine I went a lit­tle fat­ter this time and I decided to cut mine into small squares. Why? Because I wanted to that’s why. I am like that sometimes.

But if you want them a lit­tle thin­ner & crisper than the 1/8 inch is ideal. Also, I have seen many peo­ple use small cookie cut­ters but sim­ply cut­ting them into strips and then squares from there works too. Pre­heat your oven dur­ing this time at 350 degrees.

Place uncooked crack­ers on a parchment-lined bak­ing sheet. You can also add a sprin­kling of kosher salt or pep­per on top the crack­ers before bak­ing if you like. Place the sheet on the upper rack of your pre­heated 350 degree oven.

Cook for 8–12 min­utes until golden brown.  If you want you can flip them at the 4.5 minute mark and that ensures they will be golden on each side with­out being over cooked.

Then take out, cool and eat!

Deli­cious…

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