Brown rice porridge crispbreads
In Tartine No. 3, Robertson says that all of the bread recipes (with the exception of the Rene-style loaves, which are too seedy) can be adapted for crispbreads simply by decreasing hydration to 50-60%. I decided to try this with the brown rice porridge bread, as I think rice crackers are tasty. I added some sesame seeds on top of most of them.
I wound up using:
250 g BRM whole wheat flour
250 g KA bread flour
35 g wheat germ (from Whole Foods bulk bins)
13 g Morton coarse kosher salt
75 g starter (I use 100% rye, 100% hydration)
250 g distilled water (to get 50% hydration, unless I screwed up the math)
350 g cooked brown rice
The brown rice was rinsed three times and then cooked in 2x tap water. Unfortunately, I got distracted by Youngest Child right as the rice was coming to a boil. Husband said that quite a bit of water had boiled off, so he added an unspecified amount of water and set my timer for me. When the rice was done, it was rather sticky. I cooled it to room temp and coarsely chopped it in a grinder. I mixed all my ingredients (unlike my last batch of crispbreads, the dough was VERY sticky), covered with plastic wrap and set in the fridge overnight.
Approximately 8 hours later, I removed it from the fridge and rolled it out with the pasta maker. I rolled the first ball to the #6 setting on the pasta maker, with the copious addition of more flour (I didn't measure exactly, but it seemed like i used about 1/4 cup for each 1/5 of the total dough). Sticky, sticky stuff. Rolling it to #6 was too thin to handle, so the rest were rolled to #5. Most were brushed with water and coated with sesame seeds, which ultimately mostly fell off.
The #6 crispbreads were baked (on parchment paper) for 5-6 minutes at 425 degrees F, until they were starting to brown. The #5 crispbreads were baked for 7-8 minutes. They were all removed from the oven and allowed to cool while we ran an errand. On our return I baked them at 200 degrees F with a wooden spoon propping the oven door open, until they were dry and crisp.
Now that I've actually compared to one of the crispbread recipes in the book, it's obvious that I used way too much water. Also, my recipe was much larger, which explains why I feel like I had neverending crispbreads. Next time I'll double check BEFORE actually mixing my ingredients. Oh well, this was an interesting experiment.
Edit because I forgot to add flavor notes: tasty. Not quite as nutty as rice crackers I've bought commercially, but quite good. It will be tricky to stash these until our trip. I think I would either skip the sesame seeds next time, or make more of a point to press them into the dough. Most fell off.