Report on Buttery Crispbread (Ginsberg pps 193-195):
These are 100% rye crackers, and fairly easy to make, though the recipe makes a lot of them, so I only did a half-recipe, which was one 12x18 sheet of dough. The coarse rye meal that I have might almost be a little too coarse for these, pieces of the meal get stuck in my teeth, as do some of the sesame seeds and caraway that I used.
I wound up with 24 crackers about 1/2 inch thick.
They're pretty good, and versatile. I've had several plain, one with some butter, one with peanut butter and one with pimento cheese on it, and all of the toppings worked well.
Because the rye meal is so coarse, it's hard to tell how the dough is developing. I was a little worried it was under-developed, it seemed pretty gummy for a while, but after it bulk proofed it rolled out easily, so it must have been sufficiently developed by then. (There's not a lot of gluten in rye flour.)
I used a carpenter's straightedge to trim the edges straight, you take the excess dough and roll it back in. I also used the straightedge to cut the dough into rectangles before baking them. This is a handy tool that we used a lot in chocolate school, so I picked up a 12" and a 24" one for home. They're reinforced so they're not likely to bend or warp. I've used them to cut anything that needs to have nice clean lines, including cinnamon roll dough. (These days I cut the dough into strips before rolling it up, a trick I learned a few months back.) Next time I make laminated dough, I'll use it to cut them into strips for schnecken and triangles for croissants.
Next time I make this recipe (or other crackers), I might use a little aluminum foil to tent the edges, they were threatening to get overdone before the center was fully done. After I broke them into squares, I put them back in the cooling oven to dry out a bit more overnight. Today they're pretty dry, and the recipe says they should keep well--if they last that long.
Attachments:
Buttery Crispbread
Straightedges