LoveTheJourney

I confess that as with tiramisu, I’ve experienced repeated twinges of anxiety as I’ve watched bread pudding creep up the list. That’s for good reason, for just like tiramisu, bread pudding has been done to the point of absurdity over the years. Once monuments to simplicity, today you can find bread puddings built on everything [...]

Elizabeth over at Recipe Journey, using the base cracker recipe I put up a few months ago, has come up with some pretty neat riffs on it. If you’re into creative crackers, you’ll want to take a look!

I realized this week that it has been way, way too long since I made a galette. I remember being infatuated with them when I launched this site, uh, wow, hey, did you know this site is almost four years old? When did that happen? I was absolutely not paying attention. It’s kind of like [...]

World, witness the way Americans prefer to consume cheese. I’m not sayin’ it’s right, I’m not sayin’ it’s wrong, it’s just the way we do it (and that’s before our main meal, not after). Crackers are a low-effort bit of savory bakery with a high payoff. (“Excellent crackers!” Thank you, you know I make them [...]

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 [...]

This phrase has been a mainstay of popular American culture for well over 100 years. Exactly where it came from nobody knows, however it’s been traced as far back as this satyrical ad published in The Knickerbocker in 1849:
For sale, a Poll Parrot, cheap. He says a remarkable variety of words and phrases, cries ‘Fire! [...]

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 [...]