Three Seeds plus Oats Make Delicious Norwegian Crispbread

[jesse_the_k]

These very crunchy crackers are made from sunflower, sesame and flax seeds, glued together with a little oil, honey, potato starch, rice bran, and water.

These are the neatest thing since, umm, sliced bread. They have actual flavor, the one thing missing from the last crackers I recommended.

MyGuy found them at Trader Joe’s, and I adore them. They work with my low-carb menus (just 3g net carbs for each cracker). They’re large enough to feel like an actual open-face sandwich. They’re sturdy enough to withstand toasting cheese on top.

Stock varies widely at TJs, so I tracked down their Norwegian manufacturer, SIGDAL BAKERI. Amazon sold me a case of 12 for US$77 — that’s $1.50 per cracker. While they were just as fresh as the TJ version, they’re shipped from Norway with no padding whatsoever. Each packet had at least one cracker shattered into more than 5 pieces. My local TJs charged $2.05 per cracker.

They’re clearly made by the same company, with subtle differences that I’m nerdy enough to detail behind the cut.

The labels, so you know what to grab the next time you’re in a store:

Ingredients from TJ’s label, with Norwegian variant in parentheses:

• sunflower seeds
• oat flakes (gluten free oats < 10 ppm)
• sesame seeds
• flax seeds
• rice bran (rice brain fiber)
• honey
• potato fiber
• rapeseed oil (canola oil — same thing different name)
• salt, beet sugar fiber, water
  (One more item and a different order: sugar beet, cane sugar, water, salt)

The crackers are not the same size: TJ’s package weighs 214g with 9 crackers (23.77g each) Sigdal brand weighs 235g with 10 crackers (23.5 each). Both display the same calorie count and nutritional breakdown, except the Sigdal brand is 5g of protein each while TJ’s is just 4g. Rounding error?

Comments

[nerakrose]

Oh man, I LOVE Sigdals bakery's gf oat crackers so much! I miss them a lot here in the UK. I used to have them with a good medium mature cheese and cucumber slices. I remember when they entered the Danish market, I was very skeptical because they didn't look like our standard crackers (and I'd been suffering putting up with Wasa gf crackers (Wasa being the big name brand for knækbrød) but finding them too bland and often stale... imo the Sigdal gf oat crackers were too sweet for me - they're sweetened with a bit of honey and oats are in themselves sweet - but with the right cheese it was just crunchy goodness all round.

The best gf crackers I've managed to find here in the UK are Nairn's gluten-free rosemary & sea salt flatbreads. They don't quite look like the Scandinavian style crackers (knækbrød) I'm used to and are quite a lot smaller (and more expensive) but they actually taste good and gave a good texture, so I'm happy. https://www.nairns-oatcakes.com/our-range/flatbreads/rosemary-sea-salt-flatbreads
My go-to for lunch atm are these with extra mature cheddar, ham, cucumber, and tomato. So simple, so delicious. My Scandinavian heart is happy.

ANYWAY I LOVE CRACKERS bless this post

[jesse_the_k]

Oh, those Nairns flatbreads look outstanding!

My family spent a summer in Denmark when I was four, so WASA crisp were a regular part of my growing up. But being monolingual, I went searching for some background on knækbrød and encountered this lovely article plus non-GF recipe
https://www.196flavors.com/denmark-knaekbrod-crispbread

I miss the rye taste so much, although even cardboard tastes OK if I can add some gravlax or taramasalata.

In the dark era before decent GF crackers, I'd slice a cucumber diagonally to make a surface for my cheese/ham et cetera. I was served delicious bits on daikon radishes once at a party--they make a great platform, but I don't know how to select a bland one in the shop. (The spicy ones are too much for me.)

[nerakrose]

Thanks for the link! it was a lovely (and accurate) read. I'd like to add that in Finland you still get the round crispbreads with the hole in the middle. :) there re also other round flat rye breads with a hole that are less crispy - I used to eat those with butter and a Finnish havarti-like cheese. delicious. (unfortunately also chock full of gluten.)

I had never even considered using cucumber slices (or anything else) in place of crackers! Thanks for the tip, I will try it next time I find myself without any decent gf crackers :D