Dutch Crunch Bread [Daring Bakers]

This is my first time participating in a Daring Bakers challenge. I decided to join since they only post once a month anyway and I thought it might be fun to participate in a group that isn't limited to a specific cookbook. The host(s) of the month choose something to bake and provide a recipe. You can make the recipe as written, or tweak it and make it your own.

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.

I made a BLAT sandwich - bacon, lettuce, avocado, tomato. Not exactly one-of-a-kind, but still a damn good sandwich. I'm not a big sandwich person in general (I can't even remember the last time I had a sandwich before this) but I'm thinking this bread might have changed my non-sandwich-eating ways. I'd be hard-pressed to think of a single thing I wouldn't enjoy eating 10 times more between 2 pieces of this bread. The roll itself is so perfectly soft and pillowy, and the crunchy topping imparts such an amazing variance in texture... and it looks awesome too :)

Soft White Dutch Crunch Sandwich Rolls

adapted from Baking Bites

yield: 6 rolls

2 1/2 teaspoons (1 packet) active dry yeast

1/4 cup warm water (105-110 degrees F)

1 cup warm milk (105-110 degrees F)

1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons vegetable oil (plus extra for greasing bowl)

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

up to 4 cups (500g) all purpose flour

Dutch Crunch topping (recipe below)

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment, combine the yeast, water, milk and sugar. Stir to dissolve and let sit for about 5 minutes. Add the vegetable oil, salt and 2 cups of flour and mix at medium speed until the dough comes together.
2. Add the remaining flour a quarter cup at a time until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for about 4 minutes, until smooth and elastic. Place in a large, lightly greased bowl and turn dough to coat with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour, or until doubled in size.
3. Once the dough has risen, deflate and turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide into 6 equal portions and shape each into a ball. Arrange on a parchment-lined baking sheet and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Let rise 15-20 minutes while you prepare the topping.
4. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 375 degrees F. Spread a thick layer of topping over the top and sides of each roll and let rise for another 20 minutes. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until well browned. Transfer rolls to a wire rack and cool completely before eating.

I found this bread to be best the day it's made - the crunchy topping became sort of crumbly and chalky by the third day.

Dutch Crunch Topping

from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum

yield: enough topping for 6 rolls

1 tablespoon active dry yeast

1/2 cup warm water (105-110 degrees F)

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cups rice flour (not sweet or glutinous) (may need to add up to 1/2 cup more to get the right consistency)

1. Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl and beat with a whisk to combine. (The consistency should be like stiff royal icing - spreadable, but not too runny.) Add more water or rice flour as needed. Let stand 15 minutes.

Mini Irish Soda Breads [TWD]

This week's TWD recipe was Irish Soda Bread, in honor of St. Patrick's Day. This is another food I'd never tried and may never have tried if not for this group. I've seen recipes and probably hundreds of blog posts for this bread (usually around this time of year) but I always thought it couldn't possibly be that good with so few ingredients and none of the special treatment that normal bread receives. This bread reminded me that the simplest things in life are often the best.

The recipe calls for a whopping 4 ingredients: all-purpose flour, baking soda, salt and buttermilk. That's it. You see why my expectations were so low? I added a little sugar to sweeten it up a bit. Of course I can never leave well enough alone, so I decided instead of making 1 large loaf I'd make 5 smaller loaves, and to complicate things even further, each would have a different type of raisin add-in.

I made one loaf with raisins soaked in amaretto, one with raisins soaked in spiced rum, another with raisins soaked in brandy and another with raisins soaked in orange juice. I made the last one with cherry-infused dried cranberries soaked in orange juice as well. (Mixing them in separately was not the best idea I've ever had... this was the stickiest dough I've ever worked with. Ever. I would advise anyone planning on making this bread to just stick with one type of add-in, your life will be so much easier.)

The bread had a surprisingly tender crumb for having no rising time whatsoever. One thing I will say that I didn't love about this bread was the smell; usually when I bake bread the whole house smells like heaven. The buttermilk (or something) in this bread made the whole house smell like feet...not heaven.

Overall though, the bread was delicious (my favorite raisin variations were the orange juice and amaretto ones. The O.J. raisins were really sweet; not particularly citrus-y, just sweeter. The amaretto-soaked raisins were sweet as well, but with just a hint of nuttiness). I'll definitely be making this again - it's so fast and easy there's really no reason not to.

The recipe for this bread can be found on this week's hosts' blogs, here and here, as well as in the Baking With Julia cookbook.

Mississippi Mud Pie [club: BAKED]

I didn't think it was possible, but after the tartlets, scones, rugelach and now this mud pie all in less than a month, I'm at chocolate overload! This is the last chocolate-based thing I'll be eating for a while. The rest of this mud pie is in the freezer as we speak, which is a shame because it really is delicious and the texture is (er, was?) amazing.

This mud pie was fairly simple to make, as long as you spread the process out over a couple of days. I made the (oreo cookie!) crust, flourless chocolate cake and pudding on day one, chilled it overnight, then simply poured the pudding onto the cake the next day and chilled it for 30 more minutes while I whipped some cream for topping. Easy!



This is the type of dessert I'd bring to a friend's house for a dinner party. It's fancy enough for a special occasion, but its little imperfections give it a casual, homemade vibe. I'm extremely selective about the food I make that gets offered to other people - if it's not something I'd pay to eat at a restaurant, it's not good enough to serve to my friends and family. The fact that I'll probably make this again at some point for my loved ones speaks volumes about how good this pie is. The pudding also has a bit of espresso powder in it which gives it a nice kick without overpowering the chocolate. It's subtle enough that even non-coffee lovers will enjoy it.

The recipe can be found on this week's host's blog, as well as in Baked Explorations by Matt Lewis/Renato Poliafito and Home Baked Comfort by Kim Laidlaw.

Nutella Rugelach [TWD]

This week's Tuesdays With Dorie recipe was Rugelach, a Jewish pastry that's named for its traditionally crescent shape (it translates to "little twist" in Yiddish - thank you wikipedia). Before this I'd never had rugelach (I'd never even heard of it), but now that my eyes have been opened, my baking horizons expanded, my days of rugelach ignorance are over (thank goodness).

The original recipe in Baking With Julia calls for a traditional dried fruit and nut filling, held in place by an apricot or prune butter (a.k.a. Lekvar). I made the rugelach recipe from the book exactly as written (I even made both the prune and apricot lekvar recipes to use for my filling), with the exception of the shape (I rolled the cookies into crescents rather than the rounds that the book calls for) and the amount (I halved the recipe).

It was a long process and when all was said and done, I found that I really didn't care for the fruit rugelach. It was too sweet, too sticky, too much. Mine didn't even come out looking like cookies; between the epic amount of filling and the sugar/nut topping, by the time they came out of the oven they just looked like big mounds of sugary dough. I don't need my dessert to be pretty for me to enjoy it, but these cookies were seriously so unattractive that I couldn't even bring myself to photograph them!

Onto round 2. When I saw on the TWD page that some people were trying Nutella variations, I knew I had to give these cookies a second chance with this fail-safe filling before I wrote them off completely. I made the same cream cheese pastry dough from the original recipe, but used the Nutella filling recipe from here. HOLY CRAP. These were a completely different breed of cookie. Instead of soft, crumbly and mushy, these were flaky, almost puff-pastry-like, and sweet, but not too sweet. I don't even have the words to describe how good these were. And they were a hundred times easier to make than the fruit ones! Please make these as soon as possible so we can marvel at their deliciousness together.

The original recipe can be found on this week's hosts' blogs, here and here, as well as in the Baking With Julia book.

Joy The Baker!

I got to meet Joy the Baker today at her book signing at Barnes & Noble in Huntington Beach for her new book, Joy the Baker Cookbook. It was really exciting; I wasn't even planning on going, but then decided last minute that it might be kind of cool to meet her and I'm glad I did. I waited in line and when my turn to get my book signed finally came I was so nervous I didn't know what to say to her! She's super sweet though, and if she remembers me forever as "that awkward girl at her book signing" that will be fine by me.

Joy and me :)

She also gave us these super awesome bookmarks for our cookbooks!

It's a really beautiful book with tons of great recipes and amazing photos (all of which she took herself). If you haven't already, I definitely recommend picking this one up - it'll be a worthy addition to your cookbook collection!

Nutella Scones [club: BAKED]

I've been enjoying baking along with the Tuesdays With Dorie group so much that I decided to join another baking group that I just learned of, club: BAKED. They're baking their way through Baked Explorations by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. I have so many cookbooks that I never use, I'm super excited to know that I'll get a lot of use out of at least 2 of them now!

This is my first post for the group (they've already covered 16 of the 68 recipes in the book so I'm a little late) and I'm so glad I joined when I did because I would've been really disappointed to have missed out on baking these, they're AMAZING. They're a bit dry, but there's a ribbon of Nutella baked into the center that completely saves them. I skipped the hazelnuts because a) that was the only ingredient I didn't already have on hand, b) I was too lazy to go to the store, and c) they're expensive and I'm poor! The Nutella topping is what it's really all about anyway - it's excessive, overindulgent, and completely mandatory.

The recipe for these scones can be found here on the host of the week's blog.