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!

We made sandwiches with leftover Easter ham and cheese and had tomato soup

I know this is pretty late, but the last month has felt pretty crazy and I just didn't have the time or energy to bake more bread after the pretzel extravaganza. Today has been rainy and chilly, so soup and sandwiches seemed like a good idea. I made the dutch crunch topping with brown rice flour and spread it on the rolls with a small off-set spatula, one of my favorite kitchen tools (I think I have 6 or 7 of them)

The topping spread on the rolls 

The roll dough was easy and rose plenty in my cool kitchen and the topping was easy too. I see us eating this more often!

and, as always, Hunter wanted some too!

Dutch Crunch Rolls

1 1/2 T yeast
1/3 cup warm water
1 1/2 cup warm milk
2 T sugar
3 T oil
2 tsp salt
5-6 cups flour

Directions:

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer  combine yeast and half the flour. Add wet ingredients and stir to combine.

2. With the dough hook in place add the remaining flour a quarter cup at time until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Let the mixer run for a few minutes to knead.

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

4. . Once the dough has risen, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and divide it into 12 equal portions. Form into rolls. Place on greased baking sheets

5. Let rise for 15 minutes while you prepare the topping.

6. Coat the top of each roll or loaf with the topping (recipe below). 

7. Once you’ve applied the topping, bake in a preheated 375º oven for 20-30 minutes, until well browned. Let cool completely.

Topping:

2 T active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
2 T sugar
2 T vegetable oil
½ tsp salt
1½ cups rice flour, I used brown rice flour

1. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and beat hard with a whisk to combine. It should be thick but spreadable. 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. You should err on the side of applying too much topping – a thin layer will not crack properly.

3. Put rolls directly in the oven. The batch that sat out to wait didn't crack as much.

4. When baking, place pans on a rack in the center of the oven and bake your bread as you ordinarily would. The Dutch Cruch topping should crack and turn a nice golden-brown color.

Pretzel Madness!

I am catering a wedding this week and one of the items is a build-your-own ham and cheese sandwich on a pretzel roll. Yep, a roll made like a pretzel. I made a HUGE batch (YAY! for access to a 60 quart industrial mixer with a dough hook!!) of dough on Tuesday, let it rise in four 5 gallon buckets (gotta leave lots of room for rising) then boiled and baked 200+ rolls today. They taste great, and we even had left over dough that Mom made into small odd-shaped pretzel bites. Mom helped a lot, weighing out dough pieces for me to roll and boiling the rolls as I washed, salted, baked, and cooled the pretzels. 

This is half the dough. It was more bread dough than I had ever made.

First you divide and roll the dough, these were 60-65 grams each

Then you boil them in a mixture of water and baking soda for 30-45 seconds per side

Then you brush with egg, cut an X in the top (to allow for expansion in the oven) and sprinkle with pretzel salt

Bake until golden brown and delicious

Let cool

Wash, rinse, repeat, and soon you have this, which is only part of the 200+ rolls we made

And these are the little ones Mom made.

YAY! for quick breads!!

The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lisa stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavor profiles.

The first recipe I made was a lemon-poppy loaf (recipe) It was really good, but I should have used an 8x4" pan instead of the 9x5" pan to get a taller loaf.

I then made raspberry linzer muffins for a breakfast-themed potluck.  (recipe) They were really good, and I will probably make them again. 

The raspberry jam filling sank to the bottom, but they were still good!

YAY!! for Biscuits!

Audax Artifex was our January 2012 Daring Bakers’ host. Aud worked tirelessly to master light and fluffy scones (a/k/a biscuits) to help us create delicious and perfect batches in our own kitchens!

They were very flaky and fluffy, and I got to use my new baking rack!

The recipe provided was great, and quite similar to others I have used, with the one difference being the technique for incorporating the butter. I had never grated frozen butter into the flour, but it worked really well, and might be a good technique for other recipes, like pie crust.

They nearly tripled in height after baking!

I also made a batch with cheddar cheese and chives. They were fantastic with ham and green beans. 

Golden brown and flaky deliciousness!

I added the chives and cheese to the flour with the butter, tossing them all gently to mix, then added the milk and smooshed it together in the bowl with my hands. I patted and cut rounds and baked until golden and gooey.

Gooey melted cheese. Yum.

RECIPE

Ingredients:
4 cups AP flour

2 T and 2 tsp baking powder

1 teaspoon (1¼ ml) (1½ gm) salt

1/2 cup frozen butter, grated 

2 cup cold milk or half and half

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to  450°F

2. Sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl. 

3. Dump in the butter, cut a few times with a pastry blender. 

4. Add all of the liquid at once, mix until it almost forms a sticky dough, then fold and press to mix in the rest of the flour.

5. Pat or roll out the dough to about ¾ inch thick, cut into rounds.

6. Place the rounds almost touching on a baking dish 

7. Bake in the preheated very hot oven for about 10 minutes (check at 8 minutes since home ovens at these high temperatures are very unreliable) until the scones are well risen and are lightly coloured on the tops. The scones are ready when the sides are set.


8. Serve while still warm.

YAY! for Fancy Bread!!!

The Daring Baker’s October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!

I used the recipe provided but made my own filling recipes because I wanted to use ingredients I already had. The first filling was made by combining almond meal, cinnamon, sugar, and egg whites in the food processor until smooth and spreadable. 

 The second loaf had a poppy seed filling with lemon zest. I used 2 cups of poppy seeds and boiled them with water. I blended them with sugar and lemon zest

 The dough was wonderful to work with. It rolled out so thin so easily on the sheet. It was very silky 

Recipe:

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp flour

1/4 cup warm water

1 T yeast

1 cup milk

6 T sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 eggs

1/4 cup butter, melted

4 cups flour

Stir together the first four ingredients, let stand until foamy.

Heat the milk to a simmer. Remove from heat and let cool to 105-110F. Stir in yeast mixture, sugar, and salt. Mix in beaten eggs and melted butter. Mix in flour until just barely sticky. It could take more or less than 4 cups, depending on the flour you use and the weather. 

Knead the dough until smooth and elastic. Let rise until doubled in size.

Divide the dough in half. Dust a sheet with flour. Roll and stretch the dough on the sheet until super thin. Spread with filling of your choice. Lift the sheet to start the dough rolling. Coil the dough into a greased loaf pan. Bake in a 350F for 15 minutes. Reduce temp to 300F and bake another 30 minutes. If it browns too much, cover with foil.

Let cool completely before cutting.

meringue filled coffee cake

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

I tried on saturday to make the cake, but something went wrong twice and the dough never rose. It wasn't the yeast, as it's from the same jar I used a couple of weeks ago to make whole wheat bread, and that worked, so I don't know what went wrong and wasn't up to washing the bowl again, so I'll try it later and hope it works. :(

I tried again and it worked! YAY! I halved the recipe and forgot to halve the sugar, which was too much for the yeast, I think. I spread the dough with sweetened red bean paste before I spread it with the meringue. We LOVED it!