There's rice in my bread

And it's delicious. (<----the link for the recipe is there.)

This month's daring bakers challenge was to make Dutch Crunch Bread...which is to say, make some bread and add a yeasted, rice-flour based topping to the bread that rises and cooks into a crunchy topping worthy of your tongue's time. In Dutch it's called Tigjerbrood, or "tiger bread" after the tiger-like shell on the bread after baking. It's apparently often used in sandwich rolls, and I do recommend you try making it.

Blog checking lines: 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!*

see the rice? awesome.

In the meantime, I noticed that besides the soft white sandwhich roll-type bread recipe offered by the challenge, there was also a recipe that had...cooked brown rice IN the bread. Awesome, says me, I have some cooked brown rice IN my fridge. It's fate.

The bread was divine to knead. Have you ever kneaded bread dough with rice in it? It's luxiourious. All pebbly and soft in your fingers. Do it. Trust me.

So, you mix and knead, and rise and then lop the dough in half and put it into two bread loaf pans. Check, check, and check.

Let the loaf pan penned dough rise again. Check.

this is the topping, already rising in the orange bowl.

Then you mix up the tiger topping. Check.

oh. crap.

Then you put the tiger topping on top of the loaves and let IT rise. 

Oh. 

Crap. 

This is exactly the point at which you think...hmmm...that's not going to work. 

So you re-check the recipe and see that the baking lawyers have 9x5 inch loaf pans and you...don't.

It's cool. I wanted to clean up this frothy science experiment mess.

It's cool. I mean, you're sweating, not only from the heat in the kitchen but from the thought of all that mess and crazy in your oven.

Deep breath.

Put some foil on a cooking sheet and put the sheet below the loaf pans.

It's going to be okay.  Crazy, but totally okay.

Crunch crunch crunch went the tiger...

The bread came out crunchy. A little overflowing with crunch.

 overflowing with crunchy goodness! 

But it was sweet and had a lovely crumb underneath all that crunch.

bread.

It was especially good toasted. With butter.

nubbly rice texture. yum.

* Yeah, I didn't make a sandwich with mine. I didn't even notice that I was supposed to until I read those lines while posting this. The bread is long gone, folks, and there were no sandwiches. Daring Baker Fail.

And then the dogs were wearing sombreros

tiny, dog-sized sombreros.

yep. this actually happened.

Quick...bread

Blurry banana bread. Because we loves us some alliteration.

Not feeling super inspired this month by the Daring Bakers. This month's challenge was/is quick breads, which for me are something that I've been making for decades. Not much of a challenge.

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.

For those not in the know: quick breads are all the breads that don't have yeast in them, i.e. much more "quick" to make. This includes pound cake, scones, coffee cake, biscuits, and most of those loaf breads that you can buy at the coffee shop (banana, zucchini, pumpkin, etc.).

Banana bread is not my favorite. But if you add chocolate chips, I'm in.

I will tell you two things:

Thing one

I made a banana bread with chocolate chips for the Superbowl party I was attending. I used the Moosewood cookbook recipe, which includes things like coffee and lemon rind and almond extract and is disarmingly delicious. But you should probably go buy the cookbook instead of me plagiarizing it.

A. Maze. Ing. Grapefruit Pound Cake

Thing two

I used some of that candied grapefruit peel and added it to a loaf of grapefruit pound cake (which I adapted from all the lemon pound cake recipes I could find)...and it was amazing. A. Maze. Ing.  Now you can too:


Super A. Maze. Ing Grapefruit Pound Cake (makes one loaf)

1/2 cup butter, softened
1.5 cups sugar
3 eggs
3 tablespoons grapefruit juice
1/2 tsp. lemon extract
1 teaspoon grated grapefruit peel
1.5 cups flour
1/4 tsp. baking soda
pinch salt
heaping 1/2 cup yogurt (plain or vanilla. You can use sour cream too.)
Handfuls of candied grapefruit rinds, chopped into little nuggets

1. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in juice, extract, and peel.

2. Combine dry ingredients; add to the butter mixture alternately with yogurt. Beat until just combined. Stir in candied grapefruit rind.

3. Pour into a greased and floured bread pan. Bake at 350 for 55-60 minutes (or 90 minutes if you have my oven) or until a toothpick/skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before popping out of the pan.