Crackers: The Complete Guide to Flatbreads, Sablés, Taralli and Building a Board Around Them
Every cracker on a board is making a decision for you. A thick, salty, cheese-laden biscuit will bury a delicate goat cheese. A paper-thin flatbread will shatter under a slab of aged cheddar. The reason professional cheesemongers keep plain water crackers within reach is not laziness; it is that the cracker's job is to carry, and most crackers were designed to be eaten alone.
A cracker is bread with the water removed, and the decisions in that process decide what it is good for: how thin it is rolled, how much fat is in the dough, whether it is leavened, whether it is docked with holes to keep it flat, whether it is boiled first like a bagel, whether it carries cheese or seeds or herbs of its own. This guide explains the main families on our shelf, from Marin County flatbreads to Puglian taralli and French sablés, which one goes with which cheese, charcuterie or tin, and how to keep the box crisp after it is opened.
How a cracker is made
Bread dough is roughly sixty to seventy percent water by weight of flour; cracker dough is closer to thirty. That low hydration, rolled thin and baked hard, is what makes a cracker snap instead of chew. Beyond that, three variables do most of the work. Fat, whether butter, olive oil or cheese, shortens the gluten and makes the cracker tender and rich; more fat means a cracker that tastes of itself. Leavening, from yeast or a little baking soda, opens the texture and makes a flatbread lighter and more bubbled. Docking, the rows of small holes in most crackers, lets steam escape so the dough bakes flat instead of ballooning. A lot of the craft is in how the dough is laminated and rested; the good bakeries treat it like pastry.
Flatbreads
The thin, irregular, olive-oil flatbread is the modern board cracker, and Rustic Bakery in Marin County more or less invented the American version: organic flour, olive oil, a little yeast, rolled thin, cut into long shards and baked until blistered. The sel gris flatbread, finished with gray sea salt, is the closest thing to a universal cracker on our shelf, neutral enough for a soft cheese and sturdy enough for a hard one. The rosemary flatbread adds one herb and is the right partner for a Manchego, a pecorino, a slice of jamón or a tin of oil-packed anchovies. Flatbreads break, which is part of the point: a board with a few shards looks like people have been eating.
Cheese crackers and coins
A cheese cracker has the cheese baked into the dough, which makes it a snack rather than a vehicle. Rustic Bakery's savory cheese coins are small, rich, crumbly rounds that belong in a bowl beside drinks, on a board as their own item, or crushed over a salad. Do not put cheese on a cheese cracker. Put a slice of pear on it, or nothing.
Sablés
A sablé is French shortbread, and the word means "sandy": a high-butter dough that crumbles rather than snaps. The savory version is the most elegant thing you can set beside a glass of Champagne or a sparkling tea. Goulibeur, a family biscuit house in Poitou-Charentes, makes sablés with Comté, the great Jura mountain cheese, folded into the butter. They are rich, nutty and complete on their own. Serve them as the first thing on the table, with olives and nothing else, and save the softer cheeses for the flatbreads.
Taralli
Taralli are the crackers of Puglia, and they are made the way bagels are: a dough of flour, olive oil, white wine and salt is rolled into thin ropes, twisted into rings, boiled briefly and then baked until they are hard, glossy and shatteringly crisp. The boiling gelatinizes the surface and gives taralli their particular snap, different from any rolled cracker. They are eaten in the south of Italy with a glass of wine before dinner, and they are the most addictive item on this page. I Contadini's classic tarallini, small rings from the same Puglian producer behind our lampascioni and Leccino olives, taste of olive oil and wheat; the pizza-style tarallini add tomato and oregano and are the version children fight over. Serve them with olives, with a soft cheese to dip into, or with a tin of sardines and a squeeze of lemon.
The sweet ones on the shelf
Two families on the cracker shelf are not crackers at all, and they earn their place at the end of a board. La Dunkerquoise's fine waffles are the paper-thin butter gaufrettes of northern France, crisp enough to snap and sweet enough to close a meal with a cup of tea; they are also excellent with a soft cheese and a spoon of honey. Loison, the Veneto pastry house best known for panettone, makes the Dolci Pensieri line of biscuits: a butter cookie, a lemon biscotto and a pear biscotto, and any of them beside a wedge of blue cheese or a Gorgonzola dolce is the Italian way to end.
The rules of the board
Match strength to strength. Delicate cheese, delicate cracker: fresh goat cheese and burrata on a plain flatbread. Strong cheese, plain cracker: a five-year Gouda or a blue on sel gris, where the cracker stays out of the way. Flavored crackers go with mild, firm cheeses that can share the stage.
Give tinned fish something crisp and something sour. Sardines, mackerel and anchovies want a flatbread or a tarallo for crunch, and cornichons, lemon or mustard for acid. Our guide to serving sardines from the tin covers the rest.
Three crackers is enough. One plain flatbread, one flavored or cheese-forward, one with a different texture, like taralli. More than that and the board becomes a cracker display.
Put out more than you think. Crackers disappear faster than cheese. A six-ounce box is about right for four people with one cheese; double it for a party.
Keep the sweet ones separate. Waffles and biscotti go with the last cheese or the coffee, on their own plate, so nobody dips a lemon biscotto into the anchovies.
Storage and revival
Crackers lose crispness to humidity, not age. Reseal the bag tightly or decant into an airtight jar, and keep it away from the stove. If a cracker has gone soft, five minutes on a sheet pan in a 300°F oven, then a few minutes to cool, restores it completely. Cheese coins and sablés, with their butter, keep for a few weeks after opening; flatbreads and taralli keep for months if sealed.
Where to start
For every board: the sel gris flatbread. For a cocktail hour: cheese coins and Comté sablés in two bowls. For the addictive thing beside the olives: classic tarallini. For the end of the evening: the lemon biscotto with a blue cheese. Everything is in our cracker collection, beside the rest of the dinner-party pantry, and it ships nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com, or come assemble a board at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver.
