Crispbread substitute

Best substitute

Rye crackers (Ryvita, Finn Crisp, rye crisp)

Use the same amount by piece as the crispbread you are replacing

Best for smorrebrod and open sandwiches

Close match

Commercially the same product sold under different names in different countries, often with slightly different seeding and thickness.

Other crispbread substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Matzo
Different taste
Use the same amount by weight, broken into pieces
Unleavened flatbread baked bone dry, giving essentially the same rigid, snappable, moisture-free structure.
What changes
Best for
holding wet toppings, cheese and pate, cured fish, dipping, canapes
Structurally the best supermarket match in most of North America, because it does the one thing that matters: it stays rigid and does not go limp under something wet. What is missing is flavour, since matzo is neutral wheat and crispbread is emphatically rye, tangy and slightly bitter. It is also thinner and shatters into shards rather than snapping into neat rectangles, so score it or break it deliberately before you top it.
3Rye bread dried in the oven
Close match
Use 1 thin slice for every crispbread
Dense rye or pumpernickel sliced very thin and baked slowly until it is completely crisp all the way through.
What changes
Best for
the best homemade version, smorrebrod, cheese boards, soup croutons, gravlax platters
The only option that gets both the crunch and the correct rye sourness, and it costs 25 minutes. Slice as thin as your knife allows, lay the slices in a single layer and bake at 300F for 20 to 25 minutes, turning once, until a piece snaps cleanly when cool. The critical detail is that it must be fully dry before it cools, since any residual moisture leaves you with chewy toast rather than crispbread. Brush with a little oil and sprinkle flaky salt or caraway if you want it closer to a seeded knackebrod.
4Water crackers, cream crackers or seeded seed crackers
Different taste
Use the same amount by weight
Plain crisp savoury crackers, ideally the thin, hard, unsalted kind sold for cheese.
What changes
Best for
cheese boards, pate and spreads, dips, quick canapes
Perfectly serviceable and immediately available, with the right dryness but not the right sturdiness. Most water crackers are more brittle than crispbread and will snap in half rather than hold up under a slice of cheese and a spoonful of pickle, so build smaller portions. Seeded seed crackers are the pick of this group, because the seeds add the nutty depth the rye would have brought. Check the salt level, since many are saltier than crispbread and can throw off a cured fish topping.
5Pumpernickel cocktail rounds
Different texture
Use the same amount by piece
Small squares or rounds of dense dark pumpernickel sold specifically for canapes.
What changes
Best for
cured fish canapes, party platters, smoked salmon bites, cheese and pickle
The best flavour match in the whole list, since pumpernickel is intensely rye and slightly sweet, and it is already cut to the right size for a topped bite. The catch is that it is soft, not crisp, so you lose the snap entirely and the base can go soggy if it sits for more than half an hour. Toast the rounds dry in a 325F oven for 10 minutes and you get much of the crispbread character back.
6Rice cakes or corn thins
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by piece
The gluten-free fallback: puffed grain discs with the right rigidity and effectively no flavour.
What changes
Best for
gluten-free platters, toppings that carry the flavour themselves, quick snacks
Be honest about this one. The crunch is right and the structure is right, but they taste of almost nothing and have that airy, styrofoam quality that no amount of topping fully hides. Brush them with olive oil, salt them properly and toast at 350F for 6 to 8 minutes and they improve a great deal. Use them when the topping is doing all the talking, such as gravlax with dill and mustard sauce, rather than under a mild cheese.

What is Crispbread?

Crispbread is Crispbread, known in Sweden as knackebrod and sold widely under the Wasa brand, is a very thin, very dry baked rye cracker that snaps rather than bends.

Cooking tips

The job crispbread does is being a rigid plate, not being bread. That means the one property you must preserve in any substitute is low moisture and structural stiffness. Soft bread, pita or a tortilla will not work as a swap unless you dry it out first, because within two minutes of meeting butter and pickled herring it will fold.
Butter is a moisture barrier, and Scandinavian cooks use it that way. Spreading a thin layer of soft butter over the whole surface before any wet topping goes on genuinely delays sogginess by a long way, which matters most for the more fragile substitutes such as water crackers and rice cakes.
Snap it, do not cut it. Crispbread and its substitutes shatter under a knife and split cleanly along a bend. If you need neat pieces from a large slab, score the back with a serrated knife and break it over the edge of a table.
Store any crispbread bone dry, and revive it rather than replacing it. Once it has picked up humidity and gone leathery, 5 minutes at 300F followed by a full cool on a rack brings the snap back completely. Sealed in an airtight tin it keeps for months.
For gravlax, pickled herring or a smorrebrod platter, lean toward the rye and seeded options rather than the neutral ones. That sour, caraway-and-rye background is doing real work against oily cured fish, and a bland cracker leaves the fish tasting fattier and flatter than it should.

Frequently asked questions

What is knackebrod?

Knackebrod is simply the Swedish word for crispbread, and you will also see it as knackebread, Norwegian flatbrod and Finnish nakkileipa. It is a thin, hard, very dry rye cracker, traditionally baked to last through the winter without spoiling. Wasa, Ryvita and Finn Crisp are all commercial versions of the same idea, so any of them substitutes for any other.

Can I use regular bread instead of crispbread?

Not as it comes, because soft bread collapses under exactly the wet toppings crispbread is designed to hold. Dry it out first: slice it thin and bake at 300F for 20 to 25 minutes until it snaps cleanly when cool. Rye or pumpernickel gives by far the closest flavour, while white sandwich bread gives you a serviceable but plain melba-toast base.

Is Wasa the same as crispbread?

Yes. Wasa is a Swedish brand of knackebrod, and the various Wasa lines are simply thicker, thinner or more heavily seeded versions of the same product. Any recipe that calls for Wasa bread, rye crisp or crispbread means the same ingredient, so use whatever your shop stocks.

Can I just leave the crispbread out?

Only if it is a side. When a bowl of soup or a salad simply comes with crispbread alongside, skipping it costs nothing but crunch. When it is the base of an open sandwich or a canape it is the plate, so you need something rigid in its place, even if that is just a spoonful of the topping served in a lettuce leaf or a chicory spear.

What is a gluten-free substitute for crispbread?

Rice cakes, corn thins or a seed-based cracker made from flax, sunflower and sesame are the practical options. Seed crackers are much the best of the three, because the seeds bring the nutty, savoury depth that rye would have provided, whereas rice cakes are structurally right but almost flavourless. Brushing either with oil and toasting briefly improves them noticeably.

Related substitutes

More grains & starches substitutes

Crispbread substitute

Other crispbread substitutes

2Matzo

3Rye bread dried in the oven

4Water crackers, cream crackers or seeded seed crackers

5Pumpernickel cocktail rounds

6Rice cakes or corn thins