Dutchie Crust: Daring Baker Challenge March 2012

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!

Our San Franciscan hosts call this crispy, crunchy bread Dutch Crunch, but in Milwaukee we call it Dutchie Crust. I actually never had any rolls of this type until I met my Husband and his family, and was introduced to Canfora Bakery just down the road from our house. Canfora is a "European" style bakery, and I do confess that I feel no guilt in the occasional purchase of hard rolls from them. They are fluffy and soft inside with a thin, brittle crackling crust - and I couldn't help but want to compare this month's challenge to them.

I followed the provided recipes for both the rolls and the topping, although I'd like to experiment more with this topping, perhaps even on a sourdough roll. It is made primarily of rice flour, which I ground from white rice in my VitaMix. I haven't ever purchased any rice flour, but homemade rice flour never quite loses the trace of grit you would expect from a hard, brown or white rice kernel.

The rice flour is mixed with yeast and water, a little sugar, oil and salt and left to sit for about 15 minutes before "painting" the tops of the risen rolls. It is thick, and I used my hands to almost mold it to the tops of rising bread. The bread dough recipe itself was a pretty standard roll recipe, and the heavy rice topping seemed to make them flatten out a bit, even though they were rising fine. Not a bad thing, and they would probably make a good torta or sandwich roll (I dug through my frozen leftovers and found some pork and cabbage from December that I heated and thickened with a little flour. It wasn't picturesque, but it was tasty.)

The topping made the rolls a bit gritty to eat, though the interiors were soft and pleasant enough. (My Husband picked out the filling and ate it alongside his meal...) I found them ok, in part because I was comparing them to the Dutchie crust rolls from down the street, and in part because the topping literally left a bad taste in my mouth.

I consulted Fany Gerson's recipe for conchas, and noticed that the topping uses flour and baking powder - the same type of topping I believe my Rhode Islander father-in-law said they used on top of the Dutch Crust rolls he made when he worked in a Portuguese bakery when he was young. Gerson's recipe has quite a lot of sugar, presumably because conchas are really a pan dulce, or sweet bread. But I may be on to something if I begin to experiment with it.

I'll be sure to write an update when I try again to master the mysteries of the Dutchie Crust roll, Meanwhile, be sure to check out the Daring Baker blogroll to find other variations on the challenge this month.