A board of crackers in five styles, thin rosemary flatbreads, golden cheese coins, Comté sablés, Puglian taralli rings and thin waffle biscuits, beside a wedge of cheese, an open tin of sardines and a small pot of mustard

Crackers: The Complete Guide

Published 9 Sep 202614 min read

Filed under Crackers Goulibeur I Contadini La Dunkerquoise Loison Rustic Bakery

A cracker is bread with most of the water baked out, and the choices a baker makes on the way there decide what it is for: how thin the dough is rolled, how much fat goes into it, whether it rises, whether it is pricked with holes, whether it is boiled before it is baked, and whether it carries cheese or herbs of its own. A flatbread is built to carry a cheese. A sablé or a cheese coin is the snack on its own, and a board works best when both kinds are on it.

This guide covers the families, from Rustic Bakery's sourdough flatbreads to Goulibeur's Comté sablés and I Contadini's Puglian tarallini. It then reads the box from the flour line to the date, lays out the rules for a board, and explains what softens a cracker and how to keep it crisp.

How a cracker is made

In the oven, the water in a cracker dough turns to steam. The surface dries faster than the center and forms a skin, and steam trapped under that skin can push the two faces of the dough apart into a hollow, which bakers call pillowing. Docking, the rows of small holes pressed into a cracker, is the answer: the holes vent the steam and pin the layers of dough together at points so the sheet bakes flat. Herbs and seeds mixed into a dough can do some of the same work, opening small channels for the steam to escape.

Three other variables do most of the rest. Fat, whether butter, olive oil or the fat in cheese, coats the flour proteins and limits the gluten they form, which is why a richer dough tends to bake more tender. Rest relaxes the gluten so a dough rolls thin without springing back. Leavening is optional: a Puglian tarallo is traditionally made without it, while a sourdough flatbread rises on a starter, a culture of wild yeasts and lactic bacteria kept alive with feedings of flour and water, which lightens the sheet and adds a faint sourness.

Flatbreads

By the bakery's own account, Rustic Bakery began in 2005, when Carol LeValley and Josh Harris started selling the sourdough flatbread crackers LeValley had been making for friends. By the same account, they took them to the Cowgirl Creamery shop in San Francisco's Ferry Building, told the owners, Sue Conley and Peggy Smith, that their cheeses deserved artisan crackers, and left with an order for fifty cases. The bakery showed the crackers at the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco in January 2006, and industry buyers found them there. Today it runs cafés in Marin County and bakes by hand at its bakery in Sonoma County.

The olive oil and sel gris flatbread (shop olive oil and sel gris flatbread) is organic wheat flour, organic sourdough starter, organic cane sugar, organic olive oil, sea salt and sel gris, a gray sea salt from France; the maker describes the oil as extra virgin. Thin, blistered and lean, it is quiet enough for a fresh cheese and sturdy enough for a hard one. The rosemary flatbread (shop rosemary flatbread) is the same dough with organic rosemary added, a partner for a Manchego, a pecorino, a slice of jamón or a tin of oil-packed anchovies. The finishing salt guide explains what sel gris is. Flatbreads break, which is part of their charm: a board with a few shards on it 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 more than a carrier. Rustic Bakery's savory cheese coins (shop savory cheese coins) belong in a bowl beside drinks, in a place of their own on a board, or crumbled over a salad. They need nothing on top. A thin slice of pear is the most they want.

Sablés

Sablé is French for sandy, and it names a rich, buttery dough with a crumbly, sandy texture. Goulibeur, a biscuit maker in Poitou, makes sablés au Comté (shop sablés au Comté) from wheat flour, pastry butter, 25 percent Comté AOP, fresh egg, sea salt, sugar, virgin rapeseed oil and pepper. Comté is the protected mountain cheese of the Jura. With a quarter of the recipe in Comté and butter second on the list, they are complete on their own. Serve them first, with olives and a drink, and save the softer cheeses for the flatbreads.

Taralli

Taralli are the crackers of Puglia, and they are shaped and cooked like small bagels. Puglia's register of traditional agri-food products describes them as crisp rings of unleavened dough made from flour, extra virgin olive oil and white wine, rolled into thin ropes, closed into rings, boiled and then baked, with an origin the register tentatively places in the fifteenth century. As with a bagel, the boil gelatinizes the starch on the surface before the oven dries it, which helps give a tarallo its crisp shell. The register records a tradition; it is not a protected designation, and it describes what a tarallo is without certifying any one bag.

I Contadini, in Ugento in the Salento, the southern tip of Puglia, makes its classic tarallini (shop classic tarallini) from stone-milled Senatore Cappelli durum semolina grown in Puglia, together with soft wheat flour, white wine, high oleic sunflower oil, olive oil and salt. The bakery also makes pizza-style tarallini (shop pizza-style tarallini). Serve either with olives, with a soft cheese to scoop, or with a tin of sardines and a squeeze of lemon. The Puglia piece puts the ring in its landscape.

The sweet ones

Waffles and biscotti are not crackers, and on a board they come last. La Dunkerquoise's fine waffles (shop La Dunkerquoise fine waffles) go with a cup of tea, or with a soft cheese and a spoon of honey. Loison, the Veneto pastry house whose range runs from panettone to biscuits, makes the Dolci Pensieri line: a butter cookie (shop butter cookie), a lemon biscotto (shop lemon biscotto) and a pear biscotto (shop pear biscotto). Any of them beside a wedge of blue cheese or a Gorgonzola dolce makes a good end to a board. The biscotti keeping guide covers how long they last once open.

Reading the box

The back of a cracker box is written under rules, and read in order it answers three questions: which flour, how much of which fat, and who baked it where.

The name

Cracker, flatbread, crispbread, water biscuit, tarallo, sablé: not one has a standard of identity in the United States. The federal standards for bakery products, Part 136 of the food regulations, cover bread, rolls and buns and nothing else. The names still tell the method, which is what matters on a board: a flatbread is a rolled thin sheet, a sablé is a rich, buttery dough, and a Puglian tarallo is boiled before it is baked.

The flour

Under the American standard, flour, white flour, wheat flour and plain flour are four names for one food: cleaned wheat ground and bolted, with ceilings on ash and on moisture and a list of permitted bleaching agents. Wheat flour is white flour. Whole wheat flour has its own standard, under which the natural constituents of the grain, other than moisture, stay in their original proportions. The FDA's draft guidance describes whole grain as endosperm, germ and bran in the proportions of the intact kernel, and recommends that 100 percent whole grain appear only where no other grain is used. Enriched flour is white flour with five nutrients added by rule: per pound, 2.9 milligrams of thiamin, 1.8 of riboflavin, 24 of niacin, 0.7 of folic acid and 20 of iron. The federal flour standards do not define stone ground. It describes how the grain was milled, not a grade.

Italy grades its flours and the United States does not, which is why an imported bag can print a number. Italy's decree on flour, DPR 187 of 2001, defines soft wheat flour by ash and protein on a dry basis. Ash is what remains when flour is burned, a measure of how much bran is left in it, so a lower number means a whiter, more sifted flour. Tipo 00 is a grade of refinement, not of quality. France numbers its flours on the same principle, T45 to T150, under an order of 13 July 1963. Semola di grano duro is durum semolina, a different species of wheat, harder and yellower, and on a Puglian bag the named variety is part of the point.

On the label	Where	What it means	Ash, dry basis
Flour, wheat flour, white flour, plain flour	United States	One food: sifted white flour	Ceiling tied to protein
Enriched flour	United States	White flour with thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, folic acid and iron added	As above
Whole wheat flour	United States	The whole kernel, proportions unaltered	Not specified
Tipo 00	Italy	Most sifted; at least 9 percent protein	0.55 percent maximum
Tipo 0	Italy	At least 11 percent protein	0.65 percent maximum
Tipo 1	Italy	At least 12 percent protein	0.80 percent maximum
Tipo 2	Italy	At least 12 percent protein	0.95 percent maximum
Integrale	Italy	Whole wheat; at least 12 percent protein	1.30 to 1.70 percent
T45 to T150	France	Same principle; the number tracks the ash	Rises with the number
Stone ground	No definition	A milling method	Not specified

The fat

The fat line tells a buyer how rich a cracker is. American rules require ingredients in descending order by weight and require no percentages, so the order is the information. European rules add a requirement: under the EU food information regulation, an ingredient named in the food's name or emphasized on the label must carry its percentage, which is why a French bag prints 25 percent Comté and a Puglian one prints 32.3 percent Senatore Cappelli semolina. Read side by side, three labels look like this.

Cracker	Flour	Fat, and where it sits	Percentage declared	What the order says
Rustic Bakery olive oil and sel gris flatbread	Organic wheat flour and sourdough starter	Organic olive oil, fourth, after the cane sugar	None; not required in the US	A lean, thin sheet built to carry a cheese
Goulibeur sablés au Comté	Wheat flour	Pastry butter second, then Comté, with rapeseed oil later	25 percent Comté AOP	A rich, cheese-forward biscuit that is a course in itself
I Contadini classic tarallini	Senatore Cappelli durum semolina, then soft wheat tipo 0	High oleic sunflower oil and olive oil, after the white wine	32.3 percent Senatore Cappelli semolina	A wheat-and-wine ring led by its named grain

Where the words olive oil matter, the olive oil buying guide explains the grades. The International Olive Council's designations place extra virgin first among its virgin olive oils. One fat line is now settled by law: partially hydrogenated oils, once the major source of artificial trans fat in the food supply, were found by the FDA in 2015 to be no longer generally recognized as safe, with the final deadline for their removal running to January 1, 2021.

The salt

The reference amount for a cracker eaten as a snack is 30 grams, about an ounce; crackers not usually eaten as snacks, along with melba toast and hard breadsticks, are measured at 15. Low sodium means 140 milligrams or less per reference amount and per 50 grams. Sodium free means under 5 milligrams. Reduced sodium means at least a quarter less than a comparable food, and no salt added must carry the words not a sodium free food if the cracker contains any. The FDA's rule of thumb on the percent Daily Value is that 5 percent or less per serving is low and 20 percent or more is high. The sel gris flatbread declares 340 milligrams in a 28 gram serving, 15 percent of the Daily Value, the profile of a salted cracker.

Cheese, flavor, sesame

In Europe the percentage is compulsory when the cheese is in the name, and a protected name such as Comté AOP means the cheese met its appellation's rules before it met the butter. In the United States the list may say cheddar cheese, cheese powder or natural flavor, and the order is the guide. Natural flavor has a definition: an extract, essence or oil whose function is flavoring rather than nutrition. Natural on its own does not; the FDA's longstanding policy is only that nothing artificial or synthetic has been added that would not normally be expected, and the agency says the policy does not address how the food was grown or processed.

Since January 1, 2023, sesame has been the ninth major food allergen and must be declared on packaged food. The FDA has noted that some manufacturers responded by adding sesame to products that never had it and labeling it, which keeps them within the law but narrows the choices for people who are allergic. In a household that reads for sesame, the contains line is worth reading on every box, including a familiar one.

Origin, organic and gluten-free

Origin on an imported cracker follows customs law: every article of foreign origin, or its container, must be marked conspicuously with the English name of the country of origin. Product of Italy means made in Italy and says nothing by itself about where the wheat grew. Since April 2020, European rules have required that where a label gives an origin for a food and its primary ingredient comes from somewhere else, the label says so, in terms such as EU or non-EU. I Contadini names its semolina as Senatore Cappelli grown in Puglia, which answers the question directly. Organic has a full rulebook: at least 95 percent organically produced ingredients by weight, excluding water and salt, for the plain word, and the Rustic Bakery flatbread lists every ingredient but the salt as organic. Gluten-free is defined: under 20 parts per million of gluten.

The date

Federal rules do not require date labels on food, with the single exception of infant formula, and a best-before on a cracker is a quality date rather than a safety line.

The rules of the board

Match strength to strength. Delicate cheese, delicate cracker: fresh goat cheese or burrata on a plain flatbread. Strong cheese, plain cracker: an aged Gouda or a blue on the sel gris flatbread, which 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.

Three crackers is enough. One plain flatbread, one flavored or cheese-forward, one with a different texture, such as taralli. Beyond three, the board turns into a cracker display.

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. The cheese plate math covers how much cheese to put out.

Keeping them crisp

What softens a cracker is moisture it picks up from the air. In a classic study of crisp snacks, saltines among them, Katz and Labuza found that products became unacceptably soft once they had absorbed enough moisture to reach a water activity of roughly 0.35 to 0.50. The practical rule follows: reseal the bag tightly or decant it into an airtight jar, and keep it away from the stove, the kettle and the dishwasher. Denver helps. Colorado State University's high-elevation guide notes that the region's low humidity makes moisture leave food faster, and the altitude guide covers what else that dry air changes. The pantry storage guide places crackers among the rest of a home pantry, and the maker's best-before date remains the guide to quality.

Where to start

For a cheese board: the sel gris flatbread. For a cocktail hour: cheese coins and Comté sablés in two bowls. Beside the olives: classic tarallini. For the end of the evening: the lemon biscotto with a blue cheese. Browse the cracker collection, and the dinner-party pantry guide covers what else to keep on hand for guests. The Ambrosian Pantry is at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, and ships across the continental U.S. from theambrosianpantry.com.

See also: European snacks to buy, biscotti, amaretti and pastilles sorted by country.