Never my favorite, nor my least favorite, I’ve consumed a Dutch Crunch roll as the outer packaging for a sandwich maybe three times in my entire life. So why I decided to make this Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge Vienna bread with the optional Dutch Crunch topping, I’ll never fully know. I think I was heavily influenced by the bag of rice flour I had sitting around, leftover from some gluten-free baking I’ve done.
Rice flour is the main ingredient in Dutch Crunch topping, though you can use Cream of Rice cereal, fine cornmeal, cornstarch, potato starch, semolina flour, or even cake flour as a substitute. It’s combined with bread flour, yeast, sugar, salt, oil, and water, and then the resulting mixture is spread on top of the dough before the final proof. Perhaps my ambivalence about Dutch Crunch affected my loaf. As you can see, it didn’t brown properly, and the weight of it seemed to make my loaf sag in the middle.
As a credit to the Vienna Bread itself, every bite was eaten with delight by my family. I made some hot dog buns with half the dough, and those were a huge hit, too. The buns rose well, and browned evenly, without the added weight of the topping.
Vienna bread is a fairly standard dough, with some enrichment coming from the added bits of sugar, malt powder, egg, and butter. Peter Reinhart’s version uses pâte fermentée (a pre-ferment) to give the dough extra complexity. The simple, white-bread nature of the dough means it’s a versatile crowd-pleaser, making great toast, croutons, buns, rolls, and sandwich bread. And because I’m stubborn, I’ll be trying the topping again. At least I know my family will eat my experiments!
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Funny how yours sagged in the middle. I love your determined attitude to try it again to get it just right.