Wholegrain Crispbread by Jan Hedh

[BakerAunt]

I'm asking for advice/comments on a crispbread recipe

About five years ago, I bought Swedish Breads and Pastries (2010) by Jan Hedh. I had read a good review, so I ordered it sight unseen. When the book arrived, I was disappointed, as a number of the breads are not particularly Scandinavian. The recipes also require making and maintaining starters according to his recipe. The flour issue is confusing as well. He says that rye flour comes as fine and coarse. He also calls for wheat flour "high in protein, preferably stone ground." The book was shelved, and I never tried any of the recipes.

I recently picked the book up again when I was working on my Healthier Lucia Buns, and that is where I found the tip for soaking the raisins before putting them on each swirl of the bun. It worked, as not a one fell off. I noticed that he has a section on crispbread. I had found a wonderful recipe from Beatrice Oyakangas's Scandinavian baking, but due to the amount of butter, I will not bake that recipe again unless I can figure out how to alter it to decrease the saturated fat and still have the taste and texture I remember, or until I have a big party and can have plenty of people here to eat it.

I found a recipe for Barley Crispbread in the Hedh book that only requires 1 1/2 Tbs. butter and is nicely whole grain, and I'd like to try it. It calls for coarse rye flour, so perhaps pumpernickel? It also calls for fine rye flour--white or medium, maybe?

The topping includes sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, and lentils? Uh, lentils? There is no explanation. I've not heard about using raw lentils in a topping, and I always wash lentils before cooking. I may omit them, but I wondered if anyone else had heard about lentils as a topping?

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[Mike Nolan]

When working with rye flours, there two things to consider, how finely the rye berries are ground and how much of the germ and bran are included. (And then there are rye chops, which are to rye berries what cracked wheat is to wheat berries.)

White rye flour is similar to white wheat flour in that it is mainly endosperm, with little germ or bran. As you add in more germ and bran, it becomes cream colored, then medium dark, then dark.

A dark rye flour can be finely ground.

Pumpernickel is a dark rye flour that is very coarsely ground.

Here's the whole grains council's page on types of rye flour:
Rye Flours

I've never heard of putting raw lentils as a topping on bread, either. I didn't see any obvious references to that on Google.

[BakerAunt]

Thanks, Mike. I will likely use pumpernickel and medium rye, although BRM dark rye seems finely ground, so that may be an option as well.

I also tried googling lentils on bread and found nothing, but Google also kept giving me lentils cooked into bread. I looked closely at the picture, and it certainly looks like some lentils, but when I try the recipe, I'll leave them out.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by BakerAunt. Reason: added information

[BakerAunt]

I received a KAF order today that includes their rye flour, which is a medium rye. The package states: "Our medium rye flour is a slightly darker rye, milled closer to the bran than white rye. It yields a dense, flavorful rye bread."

It doesn't say "wholegrain," as the "whole grains council," suggests it should. I've always assumed most rye flour was wholegrain. I now know that white rye is not, and I'm wondering about the others that I use.

[Mike Nolan]

I think a medium rye is unlikely to be whole grain, though dark rye probably is.

I still haven't found a local source for pumpernickel flour, I did find a few promising places online but I'll wait until after the holidays to try ordering from them.

I may just get some rye berries and mill them myself, then I can control the degree of fineness from pretty coarse to fairly fine, and it'll be whole meal.

[BakerAunt]

As I noted in the baking thread from January 12, 2020, I baked this recipe. I ended up using bread flour for the "wheat flour strong in protein," Bob's Red Mill dark rye for the "fine rye flour," and King Arthur's pumpernickel for the "coarse rye flour." I used sunflower and sesame seeds.

I wrote to the publisher to point out that the quantity is incorrect, as it lists "60 rounds" but the crackers are clearly cut into squares in the recipe and in the picture. I also asked about lentils being listed as a topping. Here is the response I received:

"Thanks for the note on recipe quantity. As for the toppings for the crispbread, I have checked the original Swedish and it does indeed list “linsers,” the Swedish word for lentils. I agree that seems odd, so I think you’ve done the right thing by opting for sunflower and sesame seeds. If you wanted to get adventurous, one can cook lentils by simmering in water or broth and then roast them to create a crunchy snack that could, I imagine, be sprinkled on a crispbread. I found this recipe for roasted lentils":

https://www.edibleperspective.com/home/2013/1/3/crunchy-roasted-lentils.html

So the recipe does indeed specify lentils. I've not heard about roasting lentils. I tried roasting chickpeas last year, but while they were originally a bit crunchy, they softened up by the next day. I'd not heard about roasted lentils as a snack. It seems like a lot of work, so I will probably stick to the sunflower-sesame seed topping.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

I have another recipe from Jan Hedh's book to try: "Lemon Crispbread with Kamut Flour and Olive Oil (pp.146-147). When I saw 50g of yeast, I knew that did not seem right. I re-read the introduction on yeast, and he goes over the several kinds and says that fresh yeast is his favorite. He is a professional baker. I looked through the recipes in the book, and it seems to me that some of them, given the large amount of yeast (50g is about 4 Tbs.) appear to use fresh yeast, while others, like the Barley Crispbread I describe above, appear to use active dry yeast.

I wrote to the book publisher again and received a nice reply:

"Yes, 4 Tbs. would be a lot of active dry yeast, particularly for a crisp bread! I believe your hunch is correct, and that the recipe is assuming you’re using fresh yeast. On page 23, the author mentions he prefers fresh yeast because it yields better results, but that certainly should have been noted in each recipe where it applies. Apologies, again!

I hope the crispbread is delicious—it sounds it!"

If I keep baking from this book, I should be able to help them develop an errata sheet.

[Mike Nolan]

Fresh yeast is quite a bit heavier than dried yeast, and hard to find, though NY Bakers sells it by the pound. It gets really expensive when you throw in the Fedex overnight charge.

[BakerAunt]

I can remember--a long time ago before I baked my own bread--seeing small squares of yeast in the grocery store dairy case that were fresh yeast. I wonder if people were indeed using it, even though dry yeast was available.

I won't be jumping on the fresh yeast bandwagon since there are other hard to find ingredients that I already need to order.

It's unfortunate that this cookbook, from a leading Swedish baker, did not get the kind of review before publication that would have made it far more useful. The photography is excellent. I see the breads and want to bake them. Then I look at the recipe and the information is hard to interpret. Perhaps the intended niche was coffee table book, but it could have been so much more.

Google revealed a couple of people who had baked one or two of the recipes, but the issues arise. One person was wondering why her bran bread didn't look like the picture in the book. I checked, and apparently the picture for that bread is on the following page, but no note indicates it. At least for the Barley Crispbread I baked, I was able to find the picture of it on the following page.

The book was translated from Swedish with no effort to consider what an English speaking audience in another country would need to follow it. Cloudberry Salt is a good example. One person in England wondered if a "kneading machine" is a stand mixer and whether the bread could be made without one. I'm not even sure a Swedish audience would know what kinds of flour to use, and certainly not indicating whether a particular recipe uses fresh or dry yeast (and the problem arises with more than one recipe) would be a problem for a baker in any country.

I understand that the book is aimed at experienced bakers, but more information and context is needed. I still hope to try baking some of the breads. We'll see how the new crispbread recipe goes.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

The Lemon Crispbread with Kamut and Olive oil came out as ore of a focaccia than a crisp bread. I now think that instead of following the direction to divide the dough in half and roll out each on a piece of parchment, I should have divided it into thirds. There was too much dough on the large cookie sheet, which is the largest that will fit in my Wolf oven. I wondered if it should be rolled thinner, as it was more than 1/16th thick, but I went ahead with it. And so I ended up with Lemon Focaccia with Kamut and Olive Oil. Looking at the picture, I also think that I should have used my Knackebrod rolling pin to indent it as well, but again, no instruction to do so was given.

I didn't find that the Baker's Ammonia smelled up the house during baking. I certainly smelled it after I added it to the dough before the second rising, but only when I sniffed it. The flavor is interesting enough that I may try the recipe again, although I'll need to buy some more Kamut flour. However, I'm not sure that the anise seed works for me in these crispbread. It's the smell that my husband noticed as they were baking, and while he will eat them, he may not consume them at the speed he did the first crispbread. For me, the anise seed is almost a distraction and covers other flavors. It's hard to judge the flavor of this "crispbread" because if they had been rolled thinner, the taste would likely be different.

One more note: The recipe says zest of two lemons or 10g. Well, the zest of two lemons is 1.0 grams.

[Mike Nolan]

Lemon zest is pretty light, but I don't think I've ever weighed it.

I've got a scale that measures in tenths of a gram that I use for measuring amounts under 15 grams, and I've got another scale that measures in 0.001 gram increments that I've only used in the kitchen a few times, though that's where I store it. (I used it to measure how much overlap there is in a lattice pie crust for an article on pie crusts I've been working on, inspired by an article PJ Hamel wrote several years ago.)

I have no trouble believing that the anise seed would be a more overpowering odor than baker's ammonia, I use it very sparingly.

[BakerAunt]

Yesterday (Feb. 17), I put most of the that Kamut-Lemon Crispbread that was more like focaccia into the trash. Neither of us wanted to eat it, and there was a somewhat bitter aftertaste, which might have been the anise, but I'm wondering if it was the baker's ammonia. At any rate, I no longer have to look at that waste of good ingredients. I don't plan to try that recipe again.

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