Cheese crackers: a cold-butter shortcrust with grated cheese, sixty from one batch
A shortcrust brought together in two minutes from flour, cold butter and finely grated hard cheese, chilled, rolled to three millimetres and cut into 5 × 5 cm squares. Pricked with a fork so they don't puff in the oven. Sixty crackers for beer, for a bowl of soup and for a party table, ready in under two hours, an hour of which is the fridge doing the work.
Your own work in that: 35 min.
- Dough 15 min
- Chilling 60 min
- Rolling and cutting 20 min
- Baking (2 trays) 28 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneBring the dough together in two minutes
Mix the flour with the salt, paprika and chilli. Add the very cold cubed butter and rub it in with your fingertips to pea-sized crumbs, 1–2 minutes, no longer. Add the cheese, then the yolk and sour cream, and gather everything into a ball with a few movements. The dough should be barely cohesive and visibly uneven.
Ingredients: 200 g plain flour · 120 g butter · 150 g hard yellow cheese · 1 pcs egg yolk · 2 tbsp sour cream, 18 % · ½ tsp salt · 1 tsp sweet paprika · ¼ tsp chilli flakes
TipThe butter has to stay cold and in small pieces all the way to the oven. There its water turns to steam and lightly separates the dough, so the cracker is short and delicate. Butter smeared in by warm hands melts into the flour and the cracker bakes hard as a rusk.
Pea-sized crumbs, then a few movements into a ballChill for an hour
Flatten the dough into a 2 cm thick rectangle, wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 60 minutes (or 20 minutes in the freezer). Cold dough doesn't stick to the pin, and the flour has time to absorb the moisture from the yolk and cream.
A flat slab, film, an hour in the fridgeRoll to 3 mm
Heat the oven to 180 °C. Roll the dough between two sheets of baking paper to 3 mm. Work with half the dough at a time and keep the rest in the fridge. If it starts to stick, slide it, paper and all, into the freezer for 10 minutes.
TipThree millimetres is not a whim: a thicker cracker cannot dry through before its edges scorch, and stays soft in the middle. Rolling between papers lets you get that thin without dusting in extra flour, which would dry the dough out.
Between papers, a strict three millimetresCut squares and prick them
With a wheel cut the sheet into 5 × 5 cm squares (gather the scraps, reroll and cut them too) and lift them onto a lined tray 1 cm apart. Prick each one twice with a fork, right through. Scatter with sesame and coarse salt, pressing lightly.
Ingredients: 2 tbsp sesame seeds · ½ tsp coarse salt
TipThe holes are chimneys for steam. Without them steam lifts the middle of each cracker into a blister, the dough cracks unevenly, and one bakes faster than the next. Two holes per square are enough, as long as they go right through.
5 cm squares, two holes right through eachBake briefly and watch the edges
Bake 12–14 minutes at 180 °C, until the edges are golden brown while the centres are still pale. Bake one tray at a time (two batches, about 28 minutes in all) and turn the tray after 8 minutes, since the sides of the oven run hotter. Watch the last two minutes without looking away: cheese scorches suddenly.
Golden edges, centres still paleCool completely
Slide the crackers with their paper onto a rack and cool to cold, 15 minutes. Straight from the oven they are soft; the snap only arrives once the last moisture evaporates and the butter sets. In an airtight tin they keep 10 days.
They are only brittle once cold
Before you start
With caraway or poppy seeds
A tablespoon of caraway or poppy seeds pressed into the sheet before cutting, instead of the sesame. Caraway suits beer, poppy suits a cheeseboard.
Sticks instead of squares
Cut the sheet into 1 × 8 cm strips and twist each twice along its length: cheese straws, baked 2 minutes longer.
They go soft the next day
They absorbed moisture from the air, because they went into the tin warm or the tin isn't airtight. Refresh them 4 minutes at 160 °C and cool completely before sealing.
