Sometimes you never knew you wanted to make something until you did. Soda crackers are like that. One of those mysteries we take for granted, but which people had to make on their own back in the days before you could whisk down to the supermarket.
Ingredients
- ▢ — 5 ½ cups flour
- ▢ — 1 tsp salt
- ▢ — ¾ tsp soda
- ▢ — ½ cup lard of butter
- ▢ — water
Instructions
- ▢ — Combine the dry ingredients.
- ▢ — Mix the dry ingredients with the lard (or butter), working it in well as if you're making a pie crust.
- ▢ — Add enough cold water to make a stiff dough.
- ▢ — Knead the dough (or beat with a rolling pin) for 20 minutes.
- ▢ — Roll out like a pie crust.
- ▢ — Cut the dough into squares and prick with a fork.
- ▢ — Bake at 350 degrees until light brown.
Did You Know?
Soda crackers (“saltines”) were first made in 1876 when F. L. Sommer & Company in St. Joseph, Missouri added baking soda (sodium bicarbonate, or “baking salt”) to a simple flour-and-water dough. The result debuted as“Premium Soda Crackers” and won a blue ribbon at the Buchanan County Fair.
Sommer merged into the American Biscuit Company in 1890, and that company later combined with other regional bakers in 1898 to form the National Biscuit Company (which we know today as Nabisco).
Before soda crackers, there were early ship and military crackers, like Josiah Bent’s water crackers (1801). And Civil War hardtack were dense, hard slabs of flour and water that were intended to last during long ocean voyages. In the 19th century, plain soda crackers were often sold out of giant wooden “cracker barrels” in general stores (which is where another modern business gets its name).
