A dip without a cracker is basically a very thick soup. And while the snacking industry excels at finding ever more innovative things to do to the cracker, there’s something to be said for the alchemy that comes from just mixing flour with water. Particularly if you wind up with something that resembles the Dead Sea scrolls, like these semolina crackers from cookbook author and Eater recipe tester extraordinaire Ivy Manning. Adapted from Ivy’s Crackers & Dips cookbook, they’re visually stunning and easy to make. Ivy uses the pasta attachment on her stand mixer to knead the dough, and a pasta machine to roll it into long, thin sheets, but you can also do this by hand, with the aid of a rolling pin. Since the flavor of the dough is neutral, the crackers go with pretty much everything, and can be garnished with similar abandon. Ivy likes to top them with Maldon salt and black sesame seeds — but, as she writes, “the sky’s the limit.”
Paper-Thin Semolina Cracker Sheets Recipe
Adapted from Crackers & Dips
Makes 24 long sheet crackers
Ingredients:
2 cups (250 grams) all-purpose unbleached flour, plus more for dusting
2 cups (340 grams) semolina flour
1⅓ cups (320 milliliters) warm water
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1½ teaspoons fleur de sel, or other coarse finishing salt
Instructions:
Step 1: Combine the all-purpose flour, semolina flour, water, fine sea salt, and oil in the bowl of an electric mixer using the dough hook. Once the dough comes together, mix on medium speed until the dough is smooth and springy when stretched, 3 minutes. (Add a bit of flour if the dough is too sticky to handle, a bit of water if the dough is not coming together.) Alternatively, mix and knead the dough for 6 minutes by hand. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow the dough to sit at room temperature for 1 hour to relax. (The dough can be made ahead up to this point and stored in the refrigerator, still in the bowl, tightly covered with plastic wrap, for up to 2 days.)
Step 2: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper. Divide the dough into 12 equal-size balls. Dust one ball of dough with flour and flatten it into a disk. Run the dough through a pasta maker in progressively thinner settings until the dough is about 1/16 thick, the 5 setting on most pasta makers, or roll it out with a rolling pin.* Cut the dough crosswise to fit the prepared baking sheets.
Step 3: Sprinkle the crackers with the fleur de sel and black sesame seeds and use your palm to lightly tamp down the toppings into the dough. Bake the crackers until they are golden brown and crisp, about 10 minutes, rotating the baking sheets once from top to bottom and from back to front while baking. Watch carefully: they go from ghostly pale to burned in seconds. Repeat with the remaining dough to make ten more cracker sheets. The crackers can be stored in an airtight container for up to 5 days.
*If rolling by hand, prepare the dough for rolling by picking up a ball in both hands and pulling on either end of the dough, stretching and wiggling it until it is about 5 inches /12 centimeters long. Allow the dough to rest briefly while stretching the other dough balls. Roll out each stretched piece of dough as thinly as possible (about 1/16 inches/2 millimeters thick) with a rolling pin, lifting the dough frequently and rotating it to make sure it isn’t sticking, and adding a little flour if necessary. Proceed with recipe as directed.
Dina Ávila is a photographer living in Portland, Oregon.
Recipe tested by Ivy Manning
Excerpted from Crackers & Dips by Ivy Manning (Chronicle Books). Copyright © 2013.
