you can eat crackers in my bed kitchen anytime

Who knows, maybe if Barbara Mandrell also finds herself with a surplus of just-made hummus and nothing to eat it with, no chips, no pitas, no tortillas, she'll google 'easy cracker recipe' and stumble on this post at 101recipes.com like I did. And because I don't believe for a second that celebrities (even has beens who aren't regular household fodder) are not as vain and curious as we are (okay, as I am), after she bookmarks some recipes, she might google herself and come here.

Well, Barbara, maybe it also took you being devoid of any crackery type foods to consider making them, because, for all the scratch cooking you do (or I do, whatever, I have never drawn parallels between myself and a nineteen eighties country music star, but I'm running with it, my dearth of sequined pantsuits and all), who needs to make crackers? I certainly didn't have any aspirations to do so.

But as it turns out, crackers are quick. Just as quick as cookies and quicker than bread. I don't know if you're auditioning for dancing with the stars or are appearing at some local civic benefit anytime soon, surely your schedule is much busier than mine, but it really only takes a couple of hours.

I followed the recipe pretty much straight across, minus the semolina flour. Who keeps semolina flour on hand? Uh, not me. (Barbara?) I used my same old unbleached wheat for all 3 cups. I didn't add any cheese or infused oil or anything fancy at all. I've made them a few times now, each time simply dusting the baking sheets with coarse corn meal and then giving each cracker, after fork poking and before baking, a quick grind of sea salt.

It's nice having a jar of fresh crackers in the cupboard. I guess it's not really all that much nicer than having a box of store bought crackers, which is pretty standard fare for most cupboards, yes? But, like anything you make yourself, the making makes it better.

Last weekend, I made a batch of these up to take to a potluck. My secret confession is that I don't really like potlucks. Maybe the luck part but not the pot. Sort of how I care not for buffets or other foods behind sneeze guards. And it's not the sneezing part. Its just, I have no idea. It's always very stressful for me to think of something share-worthy. I worry that I eat differently than other folks, that my cooking skills are inadequate, that I oversalt to my own preference, all this silly stuff bouncing around in my head, it's very distracting. So, even though I'm something of a social goofball, I do like the people gathering part very much and I just close my eyes and jump and hope the food part works out. It usually does. Or if it doesn't, don't tell me. I don't want to know.

But you can imagine how leaving a pan of these to cool and crisp for a few minutes around the corner on the dining room table and then returning to find my frickin fracken dog having jumped up and knocked them off and devoured them a mere hour before potluck time would be very stressful to me. Your dog is probably better behaved than mine is, though, Barbara. My dog is aging and actually doesn't have a reputation for stealing food off the table. So maybe this is a testament to their tastiness. To know that my dog would risk being shunned back outside for the crunch of homemade wheat crackers. That's the best review I've got.

Although, wouldn't it just be the way, the batch I made to share weren't even all that crunchy. I must have gotten lazy with my rolling and made them too thick. Still good, perhaps lacking the satisfying crisp but less likely to leave crumbs between the sheets. If you're still into that sort of thing.

(if you're reading this in google reader, it appears as though the strikethrough in the title doesn't come through. sorry about that.)