March Bakers' Challenge - Dutch Crunch Bread

Sara and Erica of Baking JDs were our March 2012 Daring Baker hostesses! Sara & Erica challenged us to make Dutch Crunch bread, a delicious sandwich bread with a unique, crunchy topping. Sara and Erica also challenged us to create a one of a kind sandwich with our bread!

The hardest part of this challenge was finding the rice flour which is the essential ingredient to the crunchy topping. I finally found rice flour at Family Nutrition in Cleburne. If you don't live around here, then I would try at any health food store or www.amazon.com. Amazon has it if you can't find it locally. Please try to find it locally first, supporting local business should be everyone's priority. (Walmart is not a local business.)

I made soft white sandwich loaves with the Dutch Crunch topping. I didn't really go crazy with the sandwich though. Half the kids just wanted bologna and the other half wanted tuna fish. That's not unusual though, they never all agree. So, trying to be as classy as possible, I went with tuna fish. I mixed up chunk light tuna, light mayo, chopped apples, and chopped hard boiled eggs. That went into the sandwich - sorry but that was as creative as my kids were gonna let me get.

What will you come up with?

This is the recipe I had to work with:

Soft White Roll
Servings: Six sandwich rolls

This recipe approximates the quintessential white sandwich roll found throughout the Bay Area. The recipe is simple, quick, and addictive.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon (1 packet) (15 ml) (7 gm/ ¼ oz) active dry yeast
¼ cup (60 ml) warm water (105-110º F) (41-43°C) (No need to use a thermometer – it should feel between lukewarm and hot to the touch).
1 cup (240 ml) warm milk (105-110º F) (41-43°C) (We’ve tried both nonfat and 2%, with no noticeable difference)
 1½ tablespoons (22½ ml) (20 gm/ ⅔ oz) sugar
2 tablespoons (30 ml) vegetable oil (plus additional olive or vegetable oil for greasing bowl during rising)
 1½ teaspoons (7½ ml) (9 gm/⅓ oz) salt
 Up to 4 cups (960 ml) (600 gm/21oz) all purpose flour


Directions:

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer or large mixing bowl, combine yeast, water, milk and sugar. Stir to dissolve and let sit for about 5 minutes (The mixture should start to bubble or foam a bit and smell yeasty).

2. Add in vegetable oil, salt and 2 cups of flour. Using the dough hook attachment or a wooden spoon, mix at medium speed until the dough comes together.

3. Add remaining flour a quarter cup at time until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. (For us, this usually required an additional 1½ to 2 cups of flour).

4. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for about 4 minutes, until smooth and elastic.

5. Place in a lightly greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise for 1 hour, or until doubled (or more) in size.

6. Once the dough has risen, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and divide it into 6 equal portions (if you’d like to make rolls) or 2 equal portions (if you’d like to make a loaf) (using a sharp knife or a dough scraper works well). Shape each into a ball or loaf and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet (try not to handle the dough too much at this point).

7. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 15 minutes while you prepare the topping.

8. Coat the top of each roll or loaf with the topping as described below. While the original recipe recommends letting them stand for 20 minutes after applying the topping, I got better results by putting them directly into the oven.

9. Once you’ve applied the topping, bake in a preheated moderately hot 380ºF/190°C/gas mark 5 for 25-30 minutes, until well browned. Let cool completely on a wire rack before eating.



Dutch Crunch ToppingThis recipe should make sufficient topping for two 9 x 5 loaves or 12 rolls. If you only make 6 rolls in the soft white roll recipe, you can cut the topping recipe in half.

Ingredients2 tablespoons (2 packets) (30 ml) (15 gm/½ oz) active dry yeast
1 cup (240 ml) warm water (105-115º F) (41-46°C)
2 tablespoons (30 ml) (30 gm/1 oz) sugar
2 tablespoons (30 ml) vegetable oil
½ teaspoon (2½ ml) (3 gm) salt
1½ cups (360 ml) (240 gm/8½ oz) rice flour (white or brown; NOT sweet or glutinous rice flour)

Directions:

1. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and beat with a whisk; beat hard to combine. The consistency should be like stiff royal icing – spreadable, but not too runny. If you pull some up with your whisk, as shown below, it should drip off slowly. Add more water or rice flour as necessary. Let stand 15 minutes.

2. Coat the top of each loaf or roll with a thick layer of topping. We tried coating it with a brush but it worked better just to use fingers or a spoon and kind of spread it around. You should err on the side of applying too much topping – a thin layer will not crack properly.

3. With the Soft White Roll, you can place the rolls directly into the oven after applying the topping.




This is what I did: