LoveTheJourney

It isn’t possible to make it in America. At least not as it’s made in Brittany. The reason: ingredients. Traditionally, kouign amann is a layered (laminated) pastry with a special difference: it’s got sugar layered into it along with butter. This is a major no-no where laminated doughs are concerned, at least in America. Why? [...]

It’s baker-speak for “poking holes”, reader Kendra. Those holes let expanding gas and steam escape while the crackers bake in the oven. And that’s important for flatbreads and crackers, because otherwise they wouldn’t stay flat. They’d puff up into brittle little pillows, and zis, she is no good. Better that a cracker be flat, solid [...]

Over the weekend, I realized I haven’t done a particularly good job of explaining how hardtack was made. Based on the posts below, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that early crackers were nothing but hunks of flour paste, slow-baked to maximum dryness. The truth is that there was often a bit — if only [...]

That question from some half a dozen readers over the weekend, and it’s a good one, since matzoh and crackers can be very similar in their taste, texture and appearance. The Joe Pastry call on this is that while they may appear the same to the casual observer, they are quite different things. Matzoh is [...]

Of all the proto-crackers, hardtack is my favorite. Not because I eat it much. It’s not easy to find these days, and the fact is that even though I live in Kentucky now, I hope to keep my natural teeth as long as I can. But what exactly is hardtack? It’s a form of military [...]

You know, hardtack might have been hard, but at least it wasn’t rife with vermin. Oh no, wait, actually it usually was. Frequently with little granary weevils, but also the larger larvae of Indian meal moths. Both burrowed effortlessly through entire crates of hardtack, riddling crackers with holes, earning them the nickname “worm castles.”
While [...]

While technically it is possible to trace crackers well back into human history, the modern cracker was born, so it’s said, in 1801, when a fellow by the name of Josiah Bent began manufacturing what he called “water crackers” for seafarers at a plant he built in Milton, Massachusetts. Though militaries had employed severely dried [...]

Mexico Bob maintains that “pilot bread” is actually named for boat pilots, not plane pilots, as my sources tell me. I shall investigate his claim…
UPDATE: I stand corrected. Military crackers were called “pilot bread” well before there were airplanes.

You can boil it down to two things: 1) they deliver lots of energy in a small package, and 2) they keep indefinitely. The reason for that is simple: they’re inhospitable environments for microbes. As anyone who’s ever attended a food safety class knows, microorganisms require several things in order to grow and multiply. Among [...]