Easy Knäckebröd

The other week, we finally finished the latest batch of crispbread. In fact it was while my Sister Bip was over to visit and we had a cheese evening. Obviously Lundulph stayed in another room. Bip on the other hand was rather surprised at how tasty my crispbreads were.

So it was time to replenish the stock, so that Lundulph has something to munch on, while impatiently waiting for dinner to get ready. And I have two new recipes that I want to try - sent by my Mum from her weekly magazine.

Today I went for "Marinas knäckebröd" from a September 2012 issue, unfortunately the recipe is not on the magazine website any more. The intro on the page is "forget about difficult crispbread bakes, here is an easy version that doesn't even require rolling".

One big change I had to make was to use wheat flour instead of spelt wheat, simply because I didn't have it in the cupboard. Further, I didn't have whole linseed, but used cold milled instead and swapped the rape oil for grapeseed oil. I used the stated full tsp of salt, which was too much for my liking, so I've halved it below.

Ingredients
Makes about 12, depending on size

1 dl wholemeal flour
1 dl white flour
1 dl sunflower seeds
0.5 dl linseeds
0.5 tsp salt
0.5 dl grapeseed oil
2.5 dl hot water

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 150 degrees C and line a baking sheet or two with baking paper. I used two baking sheets of 32x23 cm size.
2. Measure up the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together well.
3. Add the oil and stir it in to form crumbs. Make sure to mix it in well too.
   
4. Now add the hot water and stir quickly to form a sort of porridge with seeds in it.
   
5. Transfer to the baking sheets and using a metal spatula, carefully spread it out as thinly as possible.
   
6. Bake for 15 minutes in the middle of the oven, then take out and carefully cut into the desired shapes.
7. Bake for a further hour or so, until the crispbreads feel dry and have a light golden tinge to them.
8. Remove and transfer to a wire rack to cool down completely, then store in an airtight container.

The amount was enough for one whole of the baking sheets and two-thirds of the second one and was about 0.5 cm thick. The consistency is very like porridge and very sticky, so avoid touching with fingers and I think a metal spatula works better than a plastic one in this situation.

The original instructions state to cut the pieces after 5 minutes of baking, but the mixture was still too wet at this point, which is why I say 15 minutes above. I got a total of 20 pieces, about 5x12 cm. It could be because I'm using a gas oven, I suspect a fan assisted oven would do a better job.

Baking for an hour resulted in a nice smell spreading through the house, but there was still some softness to the crispbreads, so I moved the baking sheet to the bottom shelf of the oven and placed the second baking sheet in the middle. This worked quite well, since the temperature at the bottom of the oven is much lower when there is a baking sheet above to block most of the heat.

As the breads bake, they will shrink a little and some holes might appear where the mixture was spread a bit thinly, but remember there is no raising agent in the mixture, so nothing to make it light and airy inside, therefore they must be very thin in order to dry out during baking.

For the visual side, I think it would look nice to sprinkle some pumpkin and poppy seeds on top and gently push in to make them stick.

Flavour-wise I suggest adding spices like anise seeds, cardamom or caraway to the mixture. Preferably ground, I should think. To make a sweet alternative, I suggest sprinkling some cinnamon and granulated sugar on top. This is a fond memory from a trial combination on sale in Sweden in the 90-s, which I really liked to the point of eating way too many of them and gaining a couple of kilos.

Lundulph and I tried one as soon as it had cooled down - yummy and crunchy.