Dave Parker
With the right ingredients, homemade crispbread is a crunchy and healthy alternative to traditional “soft” bread. Making crispbread yourself is relatively easy, only the dough has to stretch a little. Here you will find three recipes for the crispy flatbreads.
You can make your own crispbread with just a few ingredients.
The classic is crunchy crispbread, an original variant is the round crispbread from Sweden. You can find both recipes here.
If you want to do without wheat, spelled or rye, it is best to bake with chickpea flour according to the recipe.
1. Make classic crispbread yourself
You will need these ingredients:
- 70 grams of flour
- 70 g oat flakes
- 70 g grains (e.g. ground linseed, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds)
- 1 tsp salt
- 3 tbsp oil
- 200ml of water
The quantities are sufficient for a sheet of crispbread.
Classic crispbread: the preparation
Mix all the ingredients together using a whisk, spoon or the dough hook of a hand mixer.
Let the dough rise for 30 to 120 minutes.
Spread the mixture out with a spatula on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.
Place the crispbread in the oven at 170°C for 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes, take the half-baked bread out of the oven and cut it (ideally with a pizza cutter) into rectangular pieces. Because: Once the bread is baked through, it is difficult to divide it into pieces of the same size.
Place the crispbread back in the oven for the remainder of the baking time (20 to 30 minutes) until brown and crispy.
Then let your freshly baked crispbread cool down on a grid.
2. Make round crispbread yourself
Making round Swedish-style crispbread yourself takes more time than classic, hearty crispbread. Because: The dough is based on sourdough, which has to rest for 12 to 16 hours before it can be processed further.
You need these ingredients for the sourdough:
- 40 g rye flour 1150
- 40ml of water
- 4 g starter from the rye sourdough
You will then need these ingredients for the main dough:
- The rested sourdough
- 210 g wheat flour 550
- 50 grams of rye flour
- 170g buttermilk
- 15 g honey (1 tsp)
- 6 grams of salt
- 5 g fresh yeast
The quantities are enough for about ten round crispbreads.
Round crispbread – how to prepare it:
Sourdough: Mix the rye flour with water and starter and let the resulting mass rise at room temperature for 12 to 16 hours.
Main dough: Mix all remaining ingredients with the sourdough and knead for 5 minutes. Place the dough in a bowl and cover with a cloth.
Let the dough rise for an hour. After 60 minutes, unfold it once and then fold it back together. Then let the dough rise for another half hour.
Divide the dough into 10 to 11 parts and shape them into balls. Then roll out each ball into a very thin circle. Make sure that the dough is well floured.
Prick the circles of dough several times with a fork or crispbread roller and then place them on a piece of baking paper.
Place your Swedish crispbread on the parchment paper in the oven, which is preheated to the highest level (at least 230 °C) together with the baking tray.
Bake the crispbread for 8 to 10 minutes. Attention, the loaves are very thin and can quickly become dark.
Once all the loaves are baked, reduce the oven heat to 100°C and bake the loaves again for 30 to 45 minutes with the oven door slightly ajar, until dry and crispy.
Let the crispbreads cool on a wire rack.
3. Make your own crispbread from chickpea flour
You will need these ingredients:
- 60 g chickpea flour
- 45 g seeds (chia seeds and/or flax seeds)
- 30 g seeds (sunflower seeds and/or pumpkin seeds)
- 1 tbsp coconut oil
- 1 pinch of salt
- 250 ml boiling water
Crispbread made from chickpea flour: How to prepare:
Mix all dry ingredients.
Add coconut oil and water and mix with a whisk, spoon or hand mixer.
Put the dough on a piece of baking paper and cover it with a second piece of baking paper. Roll out the dough with the rolling pin through the parchment paper. This prevents the dough from sticking to the rolling pin, so you can roll out the dough thinner. Then remove the top parchment paper.
Place the dough in the oven at 175°C for 30 to 40 minutes.
Halfway through the baking time, remove the dough from the oven and cut into equal squares, preferably with a pizza cutter.
Remove the crispbread from the oven when brown and crispy.
Let cool and then break into pieces along the cut edges.
Crispbreads in the test: only two are “very good”
We tested 20 crispbreads. The result: Four are recommended with “very good” or “good”. However, a few products also fail the test.
Particularly annoying: Three crispbreads contain residues of a long-banned pesticide that is considered likely to cause cancer.
