>Four-Seed Snapper Crackers from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads
>This recipe does not call for yeast. What's the difference between
>crackers made with yeast and crackers made without?
To avoid jawbreaking toughness, crackers can be either leavened
(yeast or baking soda/powder), super thin, or tenderized with a lot of fat.
In the snapper crackers, the ground nuts and seeds enrich and
tenderize, and they're rolled very thin.
I have a recipe for a baking-powder leavened cracker here,
<http://www.well.com/user/debunix/recipes/CornyCrackers.html>, which
uses very little fat. But they must be rolled very thin or they're too heavy.
Yeasted crackers are tricky because to effectively be leavened by
yeast, they need a certain amount of gluten development, but too much
gluten and a little too thick and they become tooth-breakingly
hard. Most commercial yeast-leavened crackers incorporate abundant
fat as well. But the saltine uses a different twist: they're
laminated sheets with flour in between the sheets, giving some of the
flakiness and lightness of a puff pastry but with much less fat.
Hope that helps
--diane in los angeles
http://www.well.com/user/debunix/recipes/FoodPages.html