Dutch Crunch Bread is something I have been wanting to bake ever since I saw it on Nicole’s blog,
Baking Bites. This bread is shaped and then covered with a yeasted rice flour topping which cracks and becomes crisp while baking to give the bread crust an interesting texture of light and dark brown resembling tiger stripes.
It brought back memories of a Pao Tigre (or Tiger Bread) we used buy and feast on, when we had gone to Portugal many years ago. When I first bookmarked Nicole’s
recipe, there wasn’t much information on it, but she has since updated her post. Apparently, this bread is also called Tiger Bread or Tijgerbrood in Holland.
I made this bread 3 times before I got the texture and taste I was looking for. Of course, my bread looks less like a Tiger Bread and more like a Leopard Bread! So I should probably call it a Pao Leopardo or Luipardbrood.
I followed Nicole’s
recipe exactly the first two times. My first attempt was a bread disaster. The bread didn’t rise very much and I felt the rice flour topping was too thick and heavy, as my bread did not achieve the desired cracked crust.
My second attempt was a whole lot better. I made the rice flour topping thinner in consistency and got the cracked appearance I was looking for. I was still not very satisfied as I felt I was getting too much of a rice flour taste to my bread.
I made a few minor changes and got lucky the third time. Nicole’s recipe is for 6 buns. I made one round loaf/ boule instead of buns. I substituted some of the flour with wholewheat flour. I used only 3 cups of flour of which 2 cups were wholewheat. I also used only a half recipe of the rice flour topping and spread it a lot thinner than suggested.
The bread crust will be slightly sweet and a bit crunchy. This bread is best eaten the sane day, as the crust loses its crunch and becomes soft. I didn’t find the softness of the bread much altered by the substitution of wholewheat flour.
My picture of this bread goes to this month’s edition of
CLICK where the theme is “
Crusts”. This bread is alsooff to Susan for
YeastSpotting.
Please Note:Today is the deadline for submissions to
WBB: Grains in my Breakfast.
As I had mentioned before, I believe that many e-mails with entry details to this event are still not reaching me. I do send replies to all the e-mails I have received for WBB and leave comments at your entry posts.
If you have sent in e-mails to me for this event and haven't, as yet, got a reply from me,may I request that youresend the details or at least leave a comment at the event announcement post?
Please do this in the next three days as it will enable me to put up the round-up during the weekend.
Thank you and my apologies for any inconvenience.
It has been brought to my notice that there was a typo in my event announcement. My e-mail id was typed as
aparna00@gmail.comwhich is incorrect. Please accept my apologies for creating so much confusion.
My correct id is aprna00@gmail.com. Thank you Bee.
