The Good Life
Things that go crunch
Pamela Vandyke Price
The British crispbread market has increased by 45 per cent since 1970 and is growing by approximately 20 per cent each year. McVitie's, who distribute RyKing, recently surveyed the UK crunch potential and found that more than 80 per cent of the market here is divided between Ryvita (32 per cent), Ry-King (21 per cent), Energen (19 per cent) and Scanda (11 per cent). Although men appear to be hesitant about becoming crispbread connoisseurs (they associate it almost exclusively with slimming), mamas are increasingly rating it as something they actually like to eat.
McVitie's state that crispbread has been baked in Sweden for at least six . centuries, and was evolved because stocks of grain were so limited that housewives usually baked only twice a year, in spring and autumn. Large thin rounds of rye bread were made and suspended, by means of a hole in the centre, above the kitchen oven, so that they were out of the way of animals and dried gradu
ally, thereby lasting for months. Today Wasabrod, who make RyKing at Filipstad, are the largest crispbread concern in the world, and their purchases of rye are also the biggest in theworld:their standards for buying grain are known internationally as ' Wasa terms.'
Sweden today thinks of crispbread as a type of bread and it accounts for 20 per cent of the market. There are three principal types: light rye crispbread, which is unfermented and does not contain yeast; brown rye, which is made from undamaged whole rye grain and is fermented, and wheat crispbread, which is also fermented. A pleasant little booklet, 100 Ways of enjoying Ry-King, can be obtained by sending 10p and two wrappers from Ry-King packets to McVitie's, Isleworth, Middlesex. They give ideas for what may perhaps be termed open crunchwiches for various occasions, party dips, and even for those midnight snacks to which many of us are frequently addicted, though these suggestions do imply that the eater has a digestion of the most placid ilk to cope with pickles, pimentos and Camembert in the small hours.
All information Of this kind interests me and the use of several sorts of crispbread when one serves cheese does give what the sillier glossies might describe as a gourmet touch of gracious hostesship to the end of a meal. Crispbread today is a true convenience food. You can use crispbread crumbs, too, should a recipe suddenly include theni when you haven't any freshly made (bought breadcrumbs to me are as stupid and nasty an extravagence as bought grated cheese, stuffing and mock cream). I slightly deprecate Ry-King's vaguely 'knocking copy' when the booklet states "There is always a place for RyKing at the dinner table ... someone will want some bread with their meal. But you don't want to spoil their appetite." Certainly I would prefer almost any type of farinacous blotting paper to accompany my food rather than the crustless, porous, spongey presliced flavourless stuff that many unfortunate children will grow up believing to be bread. For if there's one food above all others that gets my tastebuds opening and shutting like avid sea. anemones, it's the sight of something, white or brown, with a crust already spendthrift with its crumbs, and dough textured with enticing whorls and granules. If the odd slice has previously been slightly scorched on the top of a solid fuel cooker or the French Monogrill (the type of griddle made in France and obtained fronl Elizabeth David) then this is all the crunchiness I need. If, how' ever, the use of crispbread for breakfast checks to any extent the consumption of those sweet' ended segments of starch that go soggy in milk and are glamorised by the name of cornflakes, then I'm pro-crispbread. But bread is, was and alwaY5 has been the staff of life. Though it is fair to say that, as emerges from McVitie's findings, crisr bread is son of bread.
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