How crackers are made
The holes in a cracker are there on purpose, to stop big air bubbles from puffing the dough into a balloon.
- stations
- 7
- things upstream
- 37
- raw sources
- 15
- steps from the ground
- 9
The short version
Crackers start as a stiff flour dough, either yeast-fermented like a saltine or chemically leavened like most snack crackers. The dough is rolled into a thin sheet, pricked with holes and cut into shapes. A hot oven bakes out nearly all the water. Salt or seasoning is sprinkled on before or after baking.
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Mix the cracker dough
Flour, water and a little fat are mixed. Soda crackers use yeast and baking soda, while snack crackers usually rely on chemical leavening alone. Soda crackers have no added sugar and little fat.
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Ferment the sponge
A classic soda cracker starts with a sponge of flour, water and yeast that sours for most of a day. Then more flour, fat and baking soda go in and the dough rests again. Crackers with no leavening, like matzo, skip this step.
16 to 20 hours at 27 °C
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Layer and thin the sheet
Rollers stretch the dough into a continuous sheet, which is folded into 4 to 6 layers and rolled down again. The layers give a soda cracker its flaky bite.
2 to 4 mm thick
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Dock and cut
A die pokes small holes across the sheet and cuts out square, round or fancy shapes. The holes, called docking holes, stop large air pockets from forming during baking.
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Salt the tops
Salt, seeds, herbs or cheese are sprinkled over the cut pieces on the moving band.
Goes in -
Bake dry and crisp
A very hot oven drives the moisture down to about 1.5 to 2.5 percent in a few minutes. Low moisture is what lets crackers sit on a shelf for months.
2 to 4 minutes at up to 300 °C
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Spray, cool and stack
Many crackers get a mist of oil straight from the oven. They cool on the line and are stacked and wrapped in sleeves.
Goes in
Worth repeating
- Hardtack, the ancestor of the cracker, was recorded as far back as 1190 as a convenience food for soldiers and sailors.
- In 1876 a Missouri company began using baking soda as the leavener in a wafer-thin cracker, which became the saltine.
Back to the ground
Follow every input upstream and crackers starts as these 15 raw sources.
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Sources
Cite this page: "How crackers are made." Assembly Line, 2026-11-03. https://assemblyline.org/make/crackers