I had some leftover Khorasan/Kamut flour from my Khorasan 50% adventures so I decided to trial run a “crispbread” recipe from Tartine Book No. 3. It was a rad experiment but I think it might have been my last crispbread.

Recipe

This recipe is from Tartine Book No. 3.

Ingredients Grams Baker’s Percentage
Whole-grain Khorasan flour (Central Milling) 170 60%
Medium-strong bread flour (King Arthur All-Purpose) 113 40%
Wheat germ 20 7%
Water 142 50%
Leaven 45 15%
Fine sea salt 7 2.5%

Number of Large Crackers: 8
Hydration Percentage: 50%
How it’s made: Mixed and fermented overnight. Rolled into 50g balls. Painstakingly flattened with a rolling pin. Baked then dehydrated at lower oven temp.

Hot Takes + Notes

From Wikipedia:

Crispbread is a flat and dry type of cracker, containing mostly rye flour. Crispbreads are lightweight and keep fresh for a very long time due to their lack of water. Crispbread is a staple food and was for a long time considered a poor man’s diet. However, in recent years there has been renewed interest in crispbread in the Nordic countries.

I was excited to make a crispbread because I have made “sourdough discard crackers” using starter discard in the past and they have great depth of flavor. My partner had also just made hummus so the timing was perfect.

But the result was just a little underwhelming. I think the lack of rise and depth of fermentation provided by high hydration just made me crave a loaf rather than a crispbread. But I do think the missing link that made the process (and result) less funsty (fun + tasty) was my failure to own a pasta machine. The pasta machine method is described in Tartine Book No. 3, where a pasta machine can be used as an alternative to rolling the dough with a rolling pin and would have been far more enjoyable for 2 reasons:

  1. The thinness of the dough before baking is critical to achieving crunch and putting the “crisp” in crispbread. I found it mega difficult (and annoying) to achieve adequate thinness with the rolling pin. I imagine using a pasta machine would include a lot more singing and a lot less sweating.
  2. A pasta machine can be used to incorporate additives or fillings to the crispbread like edible flowers or shaved vegetables. These fillings would make the crispbread feel more special and worth the effort.

Taste

I topped each crispbread with thick, crunchy, chunky, juicy Maldon salt. I then varied the individual toppings between pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and fennel seeds. The salt and seeds added a nice layer of flavor to the sweet, subdued Khorasan vibe. The taste was nice but not all that memorable on it’s own. I think other crispbread recipes from the book like “wheat-rye with caraway” or “buckwheat-nori” probably bring a little more pizzazz. The texture was nice on the edges, crispy and dry. But the center was inedible in places. The thickness of the dough did not crisp up and fully dehydrate which made more some tooth adversity.

Pictures

Balled Up
Balled up and ready to roll
Physical Labor
Insert physical labor
Ready to Bake
Ready to go in the oven
Khorasan Crispbread
Fresh Khorasan Crispbread