I had a bunch of pickled herring in the fridge for our most recent weekly gathering of family and friends, so of course I needed rye crackers and sharp cheese to serve with the fish. As it turns out, not a single person would participate in my herring party and I had to eat it all myself. I thought my youngest brother would actually vomit after yielding to my pressure and putting some into his mouth, however briefly.
It may have taken me a while to go through the herring without help, but it was okay because the batch of crackers kept just fine on their stick, unwrapped, on the counter for at least three days
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| crackers on a stick |
This is a very thin and crunchy cracker which I made with little time on my hands while preparing an actual meal, so it's not knekkebrød (the standard, more leavened accoutrement for pickled herring), though I may adapt the this to produce that crispbread another time. Read on for the recipe.
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| rolling out |
Rye Crackers
Yields: 15 Crackers
Time to complete: 3.5 hours
Ingredients
141g Whole Rye Flour
66g Whole Wheat Flour
60g Barm/Sourdough (That's the 50/50 mix of flour and water that you allowed to be colonized by yeast and bacteria weeks ago and subsequently have kept fed and healthy. You have that, right? If not, substitute with 28g of rye flour, 28g of water, and 4g of instant yeast.)
124g Water
4g Salt
7g Honey
5g Caraway
66g Whole Wheat Flour
60g Barm/Sourdough (That's the 50/50 mix of flour and water that you allowed to be colonized by yeast and bacteria weeks ago and subsequently have kept fed and healthy. You have that, right? If not, substitute with 28g of rye flour, 28g of water, and 4g of instant yeast.)
124g Water
4g Salt
7g Honey
5g Caraway
Procedure:
- This won't be too complicated - just throw everything into a mixer bowl and start it spinning with a dough hook. Mix for 2-3 minutes on a medium speed until the dough just barely passes the windowpane test.
- Leave dough in a warmish spot for 2.5 hours or so. It won't double in size like a less rough dough would, but it will grow perhaps half again in size.
- Cut the dough into pieces that will fit into your pasta roller, squish manually to flatten, and then start rolling, dusting with flour as necessary. Take two or three steps to roll through increasingly finer sizes until the dough starts to tear from the caraway, then back off by one notch on the rest of the dough. On my machine, I got to 4, but I don't know if there is any standard to these things and your mileage may vary.
- Punch holes in the middle of your crackers so that they can be stored on a string or stick for display purposes (optional) and bake for 15 minutes at 350F. Your mileage may vary here as well, but just bake until golden brown, delicious, and unburned. And crackery.
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| baked, cooling |
What to Do With This Bread
They keep well just sitting on the counter for 3 days or so, by my recent experience during winter here. I served them with sharp cheese and pickled herring, but everyone else used them as a snack chip and stuck them into some creamy ranch dip. If you do the latter, I might consider giving the crackers a little sprinkling of salt before baking.
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