A few months ago, our local supermarket started selling several varieties of Scandinavian-style crispbreads by a brand that was new to me. I’d seen the vertiginous display and attractive prices, and also been reminded of my grandmother, who loved and depended on them almost as much as ginger biscuits – but it was Vincenzo who brought home five packets, for cheese and emergencies (that is, for when we run out of bread). He put two in the tin and the rest in the bulk store cupboard, which, hardly up to the job, is a metre-square section of the kitchen dresser that’s already so full of pasta and tinned food, it’s hard to close the door. So, before I had even had one, I was annoyed by the packets that filled the tin and fell out every time I opened the cupboard. I didn’t even taste them.
Until one morning, finding no biscuit or fette biscottate, I picked one up, rough and pitted, and put butter on it. Or, rather, scraped the butter across the rye surface – a noise that should be terrible, but is as pleasurable as listening to a builder turning mortar with a trowel and then using it to butter a brick. I scraped the butter the way proper crispbread demands, so that every pit is filled with butter: a levelling-out that makes it look like an oblong of leopard skin. Vincenzo looked victorious, as if he and the crispbreads had won – which, in a way, they had. They had also given me one of the most physical reminders of my grandma I have ever experienced, as if my hands were her hands, making sure the butter (which in her case was margarine from a tub, balanced on the breakfast tray, which was itself balanced on her knee) covered every
millimetre of surface.
I had forgotten what a wonderful vehicle hard, rough, rye crispbreads are for cold butter – cheese, too – but at 7.05am, it is about the butter, occasionally scraped so thickly that the crispbread looks like a beautifully plastered wall. A new breakfast habit began. Then the supermarket stopped selling them. Which is why I am here, with a recipe to tide me over, until the supermarket realises what a terrible mistake it has made.
How long will homemade crispbreads keep? Good question: years, I imagine, in a tightly sealed tin. But until I have tested this theory, let’s say two months. Butter thickly.
Rosemary rye crispbreads
Prep 15 min
Rest 10 hr+
Cook 20 min
Makes About 25
5g dried yeast, or 10g fresh yeast
130g plain flour
170g rye flour
2 tsp salt
1 tsp (or a few grinds) black pepper
1 tsp honey
3 tsp finely minced rosemary
2 tbsp olive oil
Dissolve the yeast in 230ml water and leave to sit for 10 minutes. Put the flours, salt, pepper, honey and minced rosemary (if using) in a bowl, add the water/yeast mixture and the olive oil, and mix with your hands until it comes together into a shaggy ball of dough. Cover (I use a shower cap) and leave to rest for at least 10 hours.
Heat the oven to 190C (170C fan)/375F/gas 5. Lay a sheet of baking paper on a work surface and sprinkle it with flour. Divide the dough in two and put half of it in the centre of the paper and roll into a rough rectangle that’s as thin as you can get it without the dough tearing, so about 1-2mm. Using a knife or pastry cutter, cut the crispbreads to a size you like, leave them on the paper, and prick the surface of each one all over with the tip of a chopstick.
Carefully lift the paper straight on to a baking sheet and make sure the cuts are clear. Bake for six to seven minutes, until the crispbreads are slightly golden, then lift on to a cooling rack. Roll and repeat with the second half of the dough. Once they are all baked, turn down the oven to 100C (80C fan), or its lowest setting. Return the crackers (in piles is fine), bake for another 10 minutes, then turn off the oven and leave the crispbreads inside while it cools.
