Pie Crust Crackers

We like not wasting things on the farm. We reuse as much as we can. Not a tree comes down on the property that isn’t burned for heat or turned into lumber. Anything we grow that we can’t sell gets handed off to MadHouse Vinegar to acidify. Thirty horses in Carriage House Stables produce a prodigious amount of manure—all of which is composted and, after cooking a year or two, becomes the world’s best fertilizer for our market garden.

This is a belief we hold on the macro level at CHF. But it holds just as true at the micro level. And so we profoundly believe that if you make a pie and don’t use leftover dough for cookies or crackers, then there’s just something wrong with you.

Because we just made a quiche this past week and had a bit of leftover savory dough, we threw together these crackers to give you a sense of how easy it is. But because we loved the crackers so much, we mixed up an extra batch of the pie dough just for cracker-making.

These make great hors d’oeuvres to accompany a charcuterie plate, or a nice accompaniment to soup or a meal-sized salad.

Ingredients

for dough

2½ cup all-purpose flour
1½ tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
½ cup chilled salted butter, cut into ½ inch cubes
½ cup chilled lard, cut into ½ inch cubes (We used lard rendered from Woodlands pork leaf lard)
5 TBSP (or more ) ice water
3-4 TBSP cornmeal

for seasoning

2 tsp sugar
2 tsp garlic scape salt

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

for dough:

Blend flour, sugar, and salt in processor. Add butter and lard; using on/off turns, blend until mixture resembles coarse meal. Slowly add 5 tablespoons ice water and pulse until dough begins to clump together, adding more water by teaspoonfuls if dry. Dump dough on to a sheet of plastic wrap. Gather dough together into a ball and flatten into a disk. Wrap up and chill for at least one hour.

Mix sugar and garlic scape salt together in a small bowl.

Divide disk into three portions. Always keep portions that aren’t being rolled out, wrapped up and chilling in the fridge.

Roll dough out to about one-eighth inch thick. As they cook, the crackers will shrink and puff up. So, the dough should be thin and the crackers shouldn’t be cut too small. We cut ours in a few ways—in one and a half inch squares, using a small daisy cookie cutter, and using a small biscuit cutter. Cutting them in squares is the fastest route to making crackers.

Sprinkle baking sheets with a bit of cornmeal and spread it around. Place cut crackers on the tray—they can be placed very closely together with no danger of cooking into one another. Using a fork, poke 2 sets of holes in the cracker tops. Brush all crackers lightly with water and sprinkle with a small pinch of the seasoning mix.

Cook at the center of the oven for 8 minutes—then check on them. These go from done to burnt pretty quickly. They should be puffed up and the edges of the cracker should be lightly browned.

*These would probably also be pretty tasty topped with a seasoning mix of rosemary and meyer lemon salt or finely grated parmesan and garlic powder. We recommend adding a bit of sugar to any salty mix to balance the already slightly salty dough.