Mighty crackers

One gets terribly mad when one is trying to prepare a cracker and cheese selection for one's own consumption and 50% of the crackers - er - crack. The softer cheeses can be used to perform a rough and ready fix, but as soon as one tries to pick the fixed cracker up by the edges it folds in half resulting in doigt-a-la-brie.

This is not a problem unique to the food industry. Reinforced concrete contains pre-tensioned steel that compresses the concrete. Applied tensile forces relieve the compression rather than placing the concrete under tensile loads, which it really doesn't like. Similarly, Fibre Reinforced Polymers (FRP, didn't you know?) utilise high modulus fibres to enhance the mechanical properties of the polymer matrix.

I propose that different edible fibres be assessed according to mechanical properties (in the case of crackers, in a dehumidified state), flavour, effects on texture, and so on. They may be food-derived, such as strips taken from celery or broccoli, or synthesised, but they must be edible.

FRP manufacturing techniques are not so different from industrial cooking techniques, the two technologies should marry well. For example, I believe that crackers are hot extruded (which cooks the mixture) and then the water is flashed off during casting (people correct me, I cannot find references to industrial cracker production on the net). The cracker moulds could come with the edible textile already stamped in, so that the cracker pastry is extruded around it before the flashing. Alternatively, short strands of the fibres can be added to the mix prior to extrusion.