BSG Knækbrød
This is part of our series on upcycling brewing by-products.
Table of Contents
i. Background
Knækbrød (lit. ‘break bread’ or ‘crack bread’) is a cracker-type snack that is popular in our home country of Denmark, with variations found across the Nordic region.
Perhaps more so than any of our other recipes, a handful of products that use brewer’s spent grain (BSG) are already available to buy on the market. Most products that do use it try to hide its texture, whereas we lean into it, working around its textural constraints to produce knækbrød that we think is truly delicious. They are crunchy, with depth, savoriness and a subtly malted aroma, with no residual ‘beeriness’. Truly moreish.
We think this would be a perfect recipe for breweries that serve food to make, as a delicious bar snack made from their own by-products, rather than paying to send them off-site. It is also a very straightforward recipe to try as a home cook. It might be harder to get hold of BSG if you don’t homebrew yourself—so let this be a good excuse to get friendlier with your local craft brewer!
ii. Recipe
Ingredients
106g whole BSG, dried but unmilled
75g neutral oil
203g water
15g salt
170g flour
120g sesame seeds
120g pumpkin seeds
75g sunflower seeds
Method
Mix all the ingredients together in a mixer until just combined into a thick dough.
Set oven to 160°C (convection). Line a baking tray with a silicone mat. Take half of the mixture, roughly spread it out on the baking tray, and place a second silicone mat on top. Roll out to a thickness of 3mm or about the same thickness as the pumpkin seeds. Repeat with the other half on a separate tray.
Bake for 10-16 mins.
Flip the knækbrød over and place it back onto a baking tray with a silicone mat to ensure a nice even bake on the other side. Bake for another 10-16 mins.
Turn off the oven and keep the knækbrød in the oven for a further 15 minutes as it cools down, to ensure the knækbrød stays crispy.
Break into rustic pieces and serve.
iii. Adaptations
This recipe is extremely flexible and you could use your favourite combination of fats, flours, seeds, herbs, spices and other flavourings with the BSG to customise your crackers. You could also potentially ferment the dough with yeast or sourdough starter, or add baking powder if you prefer, to make something more like a flatbread (though doing so could change the texture).
If you’d prefer perfectly square knækbrød, rather than the rustic pieces in the recipe above, we’d recommend baking the dough initially for around 8 minutes or until they are barely set. Cut them into the desired shape, then return them to the oven for the remaining baking time.
BSG can also be a great alternative to whole grains in other baked goods where its fibrous texture isn’t an issue. We’d encourage you to try this out and feel free to let us know the results.
Using wet BSG
We made this recipe with dried BSG, which can be dehydrated in bulk to become shelf-stable. We prefer dehydrating BSG over freezing it, since once it is dried no energy is required to keep it stable, meaning it uses less energy overall.
You could also make this recipe with wet BSG, which could add interesting flavours, by adjusting the liquid in this recipe accordingly. However, since wet BSG decomposes rapidly it may not be suitable for everyone. If using wet BSG it’s important to know its moisture content, as this can vary substantially between different breweries. The moisture content of BSG (or any food for that matter) can be easily calculated by taking a small sample of known weight, e.g. 10g, fully drying it in a dehydrator, and then weighing the sample afterwards.
The moisture content can be calculated as follows:
(a) [initial weight] - [dehydrated weight] = [weight difference];
(b) ( [weight difference] / [initial weight] ) * 100 = moisture content (%).
Once you know the moisture content of the wet BSG, you can adjust the proportions of BSG and water accordingly using the following calculation:
(c) weight of wet BSG (g) required = ( 106g / ( 100 - [moisture content (%)] ) ) * 100
(d) additional water required = 203g - ( ( [106g] / ( 100 - [moisture content (%)] ) ) * 100 )
The ‘wettest’ BSG that could be used i.e. in which no additional water needs to be added to the recipe is approximately 310g BSG at 65% moisture content, otherwise the dough gets too wet. One could develop a recipe using BSG with a higher moisture content by experimenting with increasing the flour, but this would depend on the exact kind of flour etc.
All in all, we find working with dried BSG a bit easier.
Contributions & acknowledgements
Kim performed the original culinary R&D, which emerged from conversations with brewer Sean Plaisted. Aly and Eliot reproduced Kim’s recipe and documented the process with additional notes, which Eliot used to write the article after further testing and discussions with Kim. Josh contributed editorial feedback. Aly photographed the final product.
This recipe has roots in Kim’s previous work as Head of R&D at the former Amass Restaurant in Copenhagen. Thanks to Amass for facilitating such trailblazing work in culinary upcycling and holistic sustainability.
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