Knaekbrod

November is when the bread tin matters. The soups are back, the cheese board comes out in the evenings, and the kitchen needs something that sits quietly on the shelf and is ready when you are. Knaekbrod is that bread.

It's not the bread you make for a single meal. It's the bread you make on a Sunday afternoon, and then it's there, in the tin, for the next three weeks. Beside the kartoffelsuppe on a Tuesday. Under a slice of aged Danbo with a cup of coffee. Snapped into pieces and set out when someone arrives and you want something on the table without fuss. In a Danish kitchen, this is the bread that holds the gaps between the meals that take longer.

The technique is simple, but the thinness is everything. Roll it as thin as your patience allows. Two millimetres is what you're after. Anything thicker and it's just hard bread. When it's right, knaekbrod snaps cleanly when you break it, and the seeds and salt catch the light along the broken edge. You'll know when it's right. The sound it makes will tell you.