Artisan crackers made with rye flour, extra virgin olive oil and salt from the Salt Valley of Añana in the Basque Country. Darker, earthier and less sweet than a wheat cracker — the one that stands up to a strong cheese. Vegan. 130 g.
Añana salt is not sea salt
These are widely described as containing "Añana sea salt". It is worth correcting, because the truth is better.
The Valle Salado at Añana, in Álava, is roughly a hundred kilometres from the coast. Its salt comes from a hypersaline spring that rises out of a diapir of Triassic salt deposits — the mineral remains of a sea that dried up some 200 million years ago. The brine is carried through wooden channels onto thousands of stepped evaporation terraces built into the hillside and left to dry in the sun and wind.
People have been doing this at Añana for around 7,000 years, which makes it one of the oldest continuously worked salt sites on earth. So the salt did come from a sea — just a very old one, and it is drawn out of the ground, not off the coast.
Why rye
Rye has less gluten than wheat and a different, more complex flour flavour — faintly sour, faintly bitter, distinctly nutty. It also holds more moisture, which is why rye baking is denser.
In a cracker for cheese, that matters. A plain wheat cracker is a neutral vehicle. A rye cracker is a partner: it has enough character to stand under a Roquefort or a well-aged sheep's cheese without vanishing, and its slight sourness cuts fat the way a good sourdough does.
Contains rye and wheat — definitely not gluten-free
Rye is one of the gluten-containing grains, alongside wheat, barley and spelt. Having less gluten than wheat does not make it gluten-free — that is a common and dangerous misunderstanding. You will sometimes see "gluten free" attached to these in a block of stray keyword text; it is simply wrong.
Lady Joseph
LA SABLESIENNE
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