Rye flatbreads with sense and sensibility

I’ve baked these flatbreads more than once. They’re super-easy because no shaping is needed, they’re just cut with a round mold or a glass, like cookies. The recipe comes from the wonderful book by Dan Lepard «The handmade loaf», not translated into Spanish yet, grrrr. By the way, if there’s any publisher in the room, I’m the perfect guy for the translation…

These are flatbreads with rye and honey, with a nice brown inside and a sweet honey touch, delicious with butter for breakfast… a lot of butter… more, spread more butter. Mister Lepard makes them with white strong flour, but as I don’t want to eat too much white flour, I use spelt instead.

Flatbread with rye and honey

• 250 g white spelt flour (300 g strong white flour in the original)
• 150 g semi-whole rye flour (100 g in the original, but I wanted to put more rye to pretend I’m healthy)
• 300 g water (Mr. Lepard advises to have it at 20 ºC, as usual I didn’t pay any attention and I added the water straight from the tap)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon honey (Lepard says 3 teaspoons, but that is too much effort with honey)
• 1 sachet bread yeast (I think I overdid it here, I’m not sure this is equivalent to 1 1/2 teaspoons fresh yeast as in the original recipe, but it was already late, we’re going to have dinner and I was a bit in a hurry)

As usual, I mixed everything except the salt in my super-mixer and I left the dough to autolyze. I don’t exactly find practical Lepard’s short kneading method, I usually prefer to do all the kneading and then forget about the dough for a long while. Therefore I started to prepare the dinner and when I remembered about the dough, well, it was well autolyzed indeed. Then I added the salt and mixed it for a short while. The gluten had developed quite a lot while the dough was forgotten… good for autolysis! I’ve got to repeat this effect next time, I must remember to.

Then I put the dough in an oiled bowl and covered it with my famous and recycled plastic shower cap. I believe it stood for a couple of hours, till it doubled in bulk. Then I tipped the dough onto the floured counter and flattened it with a rolling pin, up to around 8 mm as per the recipe. Then you’ve got to leave it to relax for a short while. I cut it in circles with a glass, around 9 cm diameter. I put them on a well floured baking tray. Flour everything thoroughly, because the dough is very sticky. The scraps can be rerolled to cut more breads, until all the dough is finished. Once all the breads were formed, I put the trays inside a plastic bag for to keep the moisture and left them to double again. And this is why the breads caught some sense and sensibility… I left them in the kitchen while I watched the movie’s DVD…

After one hour more or less, I took the trays out of the bags, because the breads had more than doubled, they were bursting at the seams. I made the V-sign with my fingers and… sticked them on the breads without mercy to make the nice indentations that show on the pictures. And the 25 minutes to the oven, preheated to 200 ºC. While they were baking I went back to the living room to watch Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman suffer… mmmmmm.

And, after 25 minutes they had acquired a nice dark golden colour. So I took them out to cool on a rack. Like all rye breads, they go very well with savory food, like smoked salmon, ham, etc. They keep very well for several days, I put them in a plastic bag and being so thin, if you toast them for a short while, they come out as freshly baked. Enjoy!

(Also, this is my first time on Yeastspotting, the breadmaking roundup by Susan!)