Flaxseed Crisps

 

Flaxseed crisps with Meredith Dairy goat cheese and nettle puree

These delicious morsels were originally wheat based & featured in the October edition (2014) of ABC delicious. magazine. Designed by The Cooking School at Lake House, Daylesford the wheat version contained bread flour, wholemeal flour, rye flour & flaxseed meal. To give the gluten free crisps texture & a delicious flavour I have substituted in Bakers' Magic Gluten free flour, buckwheat flakes, sesame seeds & crushed flaxseed. Of course other gluten free seeds could be used (I did make a poppy seed version). 

They are fantastically versatile & can be made to be thin like poppadoms (crisps) or slightly thicker like water crackers.

You will need a pasta machine

(or a lot of patience & time to roll them out by hand) 

This recipe was designed specifically to be made with Bakers' Magic gluten free flour. The finished baked product will not be the same if you use another gluten free flour and you will need to adjust the recipe, particularly if the flour you're using contains rice flour.

 

   Ingredients

175 g Bakers' Magic Gluten free flour

30 g Buckwheat flakes*

10 g Sesame seeds

15 g Golden Flaxseed

1/2 tsp Salt

30 g Oil (I used Rice bran oil)

125 g Warm water

Extra oil for shallow/deep frying

Optional - Extra sea salt/rock salt for sprinkling on the crisps

Buckwheat flakes are available from Sunnybrook Health & Healing. They have an online store & ship products worldwide. 

Method

Grind/crush the flaxseeds in your favourite food processor until most of the seeds have been cracked. I used my Thermomix for 10 secs at speed 9.

Thermomix

Place all ingredients in the TM bowl & process for 30 secs on speed 2. Ensure all ingredients are incorporated & the mixture has come together as a dough. 

Stand Mixer or By hand

Mix together the dry ingredients. I used the flat beater on my Kitchen Aid.

Add in the warm water & oil.

Mix until it comes together as a dough.

All methods

Prepare a clean work surface (pastry mat) & knead the dough. Kneading the dough helps with the flexibility. If you want to test whether the dough is flexible roll it out into a sausage shape & then bend it in half. If it breaks easily knead the dough for longer. 

Divide the dough into quarters take one & cover the remaining 3 to stop them from drying out.

Feed the dough through the pasta machine on the widest setting. If the dough tends to crumble when coming out of the machine, knead it a little more & try again. You may need to repeat this process 2 or 3 times before it starts to come out of the machine smoothly. Fold the dough over & put it through the machine, repeat this process 2 or 3 times. Put the dough through the machine & lay out the flattened dough on a clean work surface. Sometimes I would get little bits of dough sticking up I simply patted them down.

I found it easier to cut pieces of the dough & then use the pasta machine to make the individual pieces thinner. For crisps I used a round cutter ~10 cm & for the smaller crackers the round cutter was 48 mm. The off cuts of dough can be kneaded together & put through the machine again.

Decrease the setting on the pasta machine by 3 notches. Take a piece of the cut dough & put it through the machine 3 times. Repeat with the other cut pieces.

If you are making crackers the pieces are ready to be deep fried.

If you are making crisps decrease the setting on the pasta machine by another 1 - 2 notches. Put the individual pieces through the machine at this setting 2 - 3 times. Sometimes the larger flaxseed pieces will make holes in the dough when it is being fed through the machine. If you are getting too many holes in your dough increase the setting on the pasta machine by 1.

Alternatively if you want all of your pieces to be the same shape at the end put the dough through the machine decreasing the setting until the dough is the thickness you want & then cut out the shapes. 

 

Cooking the crisps

In the original recipe the crisps were shallow fried in ~2 cm sunflower oil. As my shallow frying skills need a bit of work with regards to keeping the oil at a specific temperature I used a deep fryer to cook the crisps & crackers.

I did cook a batch of the crackers in the oven at 190 C for ~12 mins however they were not as nice. There was a huge look of disappointment on my daughter's face when she bit into one of the oven baked crackers.

Preheat oil to ~180 C.

Fry the crisps/crackers in batches for ~3 mins turning them during the cooking process. The length of time required will depend on the thickness of the crisp. When the dough is first put in the oil it will sizzle & bubble a lot this subsides when the crisp is nearly cooked. If after frying the crisps are not crisp put them back into the oil for a little longer.

Transfer cooked crisps to paper towel to drain & cool. Optional - sprinkle cooked crisps with sea salt.

Enjoy by themselves or with dips & cheese.