It seemed completely insane to me to consider making your own crackers. But then my favorite NY Times chef, Mark Bittman, showed how incredibly easy it is, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.

All you need to make a really great, cheap cracker is flour, salt, butter (you could substitute olive oil too), and a food processor-this is the foundation to any basic cracker. The one Bittman demos here is parmesan cream crackers, so all you need to add parmesan and cream to the ingredient list. Mix up the dough, then roll it out and score them with a pizza wheel (you could buy a fancy pastry wheel, but for the first go round I’d experiment with the pizza wheel, it is not as decorative, but it does the trick!). Then sprinkle a little extra parmesan and toss in the oven at 400 for 10 or so minutes.

There is a bit of a learning curve. My first batch was not too pretty, but they still wowed the crowd. My friends were completely floored by the idea that I could actually make crackers, nevermind the fact that they were delicious! And far far less unintelligible ingredients!

I was completely amazed at how easy it was–click for the actual recipe: Parmesan Cheese Crackers and if you need a little more guidance you can watch the Parmesan Cheese Crackers Video

Editor’s Note (from Ray @ Tip Hero): I too was blown away at how easy Bittman made making these crackers look, so I decided to give it a shot. I did the most basic recipe of: flour, butter, salt, and some milk. Ingredients must not have cost more than 35 cents. Although the crackers didn’t come out perfect they tasted fabulous for such a basic cracker. Now I’m really excited about stepping it up a knotch and trying out different ingredients like rosemary, parmesan, jalepeno, sesame seeds, and tons of others. Thanks for this tip Jill!

Here’s a photo of how my crackers came out:

Savings: For about 50-75 cents in ingredients you can make artisan level crackers that cost $4 for a quarter pound box in stores.

Photo credit: fugzu