Olive Oil and Sea Salt Crackers

The “Perfect” Cracker -Olive Oil and Sea Salt Crackers

I prefer my crackers to be utilitarian, useful. These olive oil and sea salt crackers are just that. The crackers are crisp and feel sturdy enough to dig in the garden (not really).

But they DO stand up well to the heartiest of dips like hummus, tapenade or guacamole.

Even as sturdy as they are, they seem to magically know when they’re in your mouth and self destruct on cue in a flavor filled burst.

Olive Oil Cracker Perfection Every Time

The trick to getting the crackers perfect each and every time is to get them to a very consistent thickness. You could certainly try to do that with a rolling pin, but an infinitely better solution is to use a pasta machine.
I’ve had an Atlas pasta roller for probably 20 years and I doubt if it has been used even 15 times. This amazingly simple recipe will increase the usage dramatically. the Atlas is a hand crank version if you have a decent stand mixer it either came with one or you should be able to buy one for it. Since I still have three kids at home I have plenty of “Horsepower” to make my Olive Oil and sea salt crackers.

I wish I could say I thought of this on my own but didn’t a friend told me about this trick. Even though there is a bit of “work” involved with cranking, the kids love to help crank the crank and watch the play-doh like stuff squish and ooze through the rollers. With a little practice and slightly smaller quantities of dough, I could do this by myself.
My hand-cranked machine is an Atlas that was made in ITALY not China.

Olive oil and Sea Salt Cracker recipe

My olive oil cracker recipe is simple: regular flour and semolina flour (the latter provides a slightly more “old-school” texture and the additional gluten helps to strengthen the dough), a bit of salt and olive oil, and enough water to bind into a dough that will be smooth but not tacky (or it will gunk up your pasta roller). I haven’t done that with this dough, but early on made a real mess of the roller with a too sticky pasta dough…

This is a good thing because the recipe makes quite a bit, but as long as you’re taking out the roller and preheating the oven, you might as well bake a good batch. And really, once you have them around I don’t think you’ll run out of things to eat them with: hummus, tapenade, your favorite cheese, you get the idea.

The recipe is easily open to variations, so add the spices and dried herbs of your choice, and possibly some grated hard cheese to the dough I’ve used sesame seeds. If you decide to use seeds, be sure to use small ones. Sesame seed are probably the limit as if the seeds are too big they’ll make the dough difficult to get thin enough. Here are my recommendations on the dry stuff. For every gram you add in take out and equivalent amount of flour. I would shoot for somewhere between 20 and 45 grams of your preferred “pixie dust”. If you use 20 grams, that would mean reduce each type of flour by 10 grams.

Sourdough starter note: If you maintain a sourdough starter, you can use up some of your excess starter in this recipe. If your starter is 50% flour by weight, then it’s simple to adjust your recipe: I usually use 100grams of starter. Since it is half each, I remove 50g of water for a total of 70ml (if you’re using liquid measure, 5TBL is 75ml and close enough) EACH flour is reduced to 135g. Also if it is still active, know that if the dough is allowed to sit for any amount of time, it will cause the crackers to become bubbly when cooked. This creates the problem of uneven cooking.

Basic Olive Oil and Sea Salt Crackers

• 160 grams (5 2/3 ounces) all-purpose flour
• 160 grams (5 2/3 ounces) fine semolina flour (if you can’t find semolina flour, just use all regular flour. You can use all semolina if you want but it is very hard/stiff and more difficult to work, but if your roller is motorized, go for it!)
• 7 grams (1 1/2 teaspoons) fine sea salt
• 3 Tablespoons olive oil
• 120 ml (1/2 cup) water
• Sourdough Starter? -See note above

Mix the flours and salt in a mixing bowl. Add the olive oil and stir it in with a fork. Add the water and mix it in. When the water is absorbed, turn the mixture out on a clean work surface and knead the dough gently to gather into a smooth ball. Add a touch more water if the dough feels too dry to come together, but the consistency you’re shooting for is smooth, not at all sticky or tacky. (Remember, you don’t want to gum up your pasta machine) If the dough is done right, you won’t even need to take it out of the bowl. I can use a dinner fork and never leave the bowl.

Divide the dough into 8 pieces of (roughly) equal size, and cover with a kitchen towel. If you’re completely engineering minded [Anal-retentive (?)] like me, you can calculate the exact amount like I did. (My first batch of Olive oil crackers was 499 grams so 62.4 per 1/8^th)

Preheat the oven to 410°F and prepare two baking sheets lined with parchment paper or silicone baking mats

– this is so you can bake two batches of crackers at a time, but if you only have one baking sheet, that’s fine, too. I say 410°F, and unfortunately I don’t really know. My ovens are awful so I am constantly turning things as they bake and sometime will even move the temp up and down 25 to 50F while cooking.

Take one piece of dough (keep the others covered to prevent drying out) and flatten between the palms of your hands. Set the pasta roller on the widest setting, and slip the dough in the roller to thin it out. Fold the strip of dough in half so the two short sides meet, and slip the dough into the roller again, fold in first. If you put it in open end first, no worries, you may get an air pocket. Just do it again. Since we did not do a lot of kneading, think of this as the kneading. Repeat 3 or 4 times until the dough feels smooth supple. If at any time your olive oil cracker dough gets sticky, dust it with a touch of flour.

Switch the pasta roller to the next (= narrower) setting and slip the dough in (just once this time) to thin it out. Repeat with the subsequent settings until you reach setting #5, and get a thin, long roughly rectangular sheet of dough. Place it on one of the prepared baking sheets, or a flour-dusted peel if you’re using a bread stone. I’m able to fit two or three of these ~60g pieces across the width of the sheet.

(If you don’t have a pasta roller, perhaps you can borrow one from a friend? or find a store with a decent return policy and I bet you WON’T be taking it back)

Repeat with more pieces of dough until there is no room left on your baking sheets. Using a sharp paring knife, a pastry wheel a pizza cutter etc. score the sheets of dough into square or triangular pieces so they’ll be easier to break off. Be aggressive. If you don’t score deep enough, you’ll have a hard time separating your crackers. If you like lots of salt, and your doctor says it’s OK then just before putting them in the oven sprinkle with some additional coarse (or fine) sea salt.

Insert the baking sheet into the oven and bake for 7 to 10 minutes, or until golden to golden brown. If I pre-divide the dough, I’m able to create the next tray of crackers to bake before the first ones finish. I move the first batch from the bottom to the top rack in the oven (and rotate them), insert the second batch. I keep going till it’s all done.

Transfer the olive oil crackers to a cooling rack, and repeat with the remaining pieces of dough. Once cool, break apart along the scores and place in an airtight container or large plastic bag.

The crackers will keep for a few weeks in an airtight container.

Variation Ideas:

• Sesame seeds
• Poppy seeds
• Caraway seeds
• Replace the sea salt with Garlic Salt-or- add a couple of cloves of crushed garlic (reduce olive oil?)
• Basil
• Rosemary
• Oregano -all the herbs in my back yard
• thyme
• grated Parmesan or other “hard” cheese

In the pictures above, the dough balls were weighed to withing 1 gram of each other.  The number corresponds to the setting on the pasta machine.   You can see the size get larger as the dough gets thinner.

Let me know how your Olive Oil Crackers turn out and what you use them with.

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