Salted Butter Break-ups {FFwD}

March 18, 2011 at 7:32 am (Around My French Table, Cookies, Dorie Greenspan, French Fridays With Dorie, Quick Bread)
Tags: Around My French Table, cookie, cracker, Dorie Greenspan, egg wash, food processor, French cooking, French food, French Fridays With Dorie, gray sea salt, grey sea salt, salted butter break-up, sea salt, sel gris

Breaking up is easy (and tasty) to do.

This week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe was another quick and delicious treat. Like the savory cheese and chive bread we made a few weeks ago, the dough for salted butter break-ups came together quickly. The ingredients — flour, sugar, sel gris (grey sea salt), unsalted butter, and water — are mixed in the food processor in a matter of seconds.

After mixing the dough, I pressed it out into a rectangle, which I then wrapped and refrigerated for a few hours.

I rolled the chilled dough out between layers of plastic wrap to about 5 x 11 inches. Then I brushed the dough with egg wash and made a cross-hatch pattern in the dough à la peanut butter cookies. I baked the dough in a 350°F oven for about 30 minutes, until it was crisp on the outside and tender on the inside.

After cooling the break-up, I placed it on the table whole, and we kept breaking off pieces all evening as we passed the table. I expected it to be like a thick cracker, and the saltiness of it was certainly reminiscent of homemade crackers I’ve made. But the sweetness and thickness of it were definitely more cookie-like. I would call it more of a salty cookie than a sweet cracker. And neither of those descriptions may sound all that appealing, but trust me when I say this cookie/cracker was addictively delicious.

So call it what you want. But definitely call me when you bake this recipe. I’ll be right over.