Dutch Crunch Bread

There is only one word to describe yesterday.  LAZY.  Hannah was off yesterday and while we thought we’d have our cleaning/laundry/productive pants on, turns out we had lay on the couch watching t.v. pants on until nearly 3 p.m.!  Normally on my days off of work I try to do so much, but I just felt like doing nothing with Hannah and it was glorious.  We laughed, watched youtube videos, we did a Starbucks run.  I didn’t eat breakfast until nearly 11:30, and this actually turned into both my breakfast and lunch.  I know Helen talks about eating only two meals a day when on vacation, and yesterday that’s how my day worked out.

I used the rest of the leftover beef from work (3 ounces for 3 points) and made a hash with 3 ounces of red potatoes (2) cooked in 1 teaspoon grape seed oil (1).  An egg white (1) spinach omelet with 1/2 ounce of cheddar cheese and spinach (2) with blueberries on the side.   That whole plate is only 9 smart points and because it was so high in protein, kept me full until dinner.

Being a food blogger you tend not to repeat a lot of dishes.  Okay, well, I repeat pizza and lasagna soup.  Hannah reminded me about a black bean soup and club sandwich dinner I made when she was like a freshman in high school that she said was the best meal I ever made.  She even told me at dinner that night that she could eat that dinner once a week, and I’ve never made it again.  Sorry Hannah!  I was going to make her dreams come true yesterday by making it again, but she requested my homemade bread and chicken and wild rice soup.  As long as I didn’t make the soup too healthy – ha!

If you buy rotisserie chicken, buy it at Sam’s Club.  Only $4.98 and they are bigger than the ones in the grocery store.  Here’s  tip from me to you though when going to Sam’s Club.  I knew I only wanted to buy one thing, so I only brought in enough money to pay for that one item, so I wouldn’t be tempted to keep throwing shit in my cart and walking away with $100 worth of stuff I don’t even need.  I did have enough money to buy a drink though.  I think people looked at me wondering how I could walk into Sam’s Club and leave with only 2 things!  I don’t drink pop very often, but this was Tony’s drink he used to get when we went to Sam’s Club together – 3/4 of Coke Zero with 1/4 Minute Maid lemonade.  Sounds weird but it’s delicious!

I made my artisan bread dough before I ran my errands.  It’s the Artisan Bread in 5 recipe – I’ve made it so many times, I don’t need to look it up:  6.5 cups flour, 3 cups warm water, 1.5 tablespoons yeast, 1.5 tablespoons salt.  That’s it.  It’s enough to make 4 loaves of bread.   I was surfing bread recipes on their website when I came across Dutch Crunch bread.  Huh.  I’ve never even heard of it, but I’ve seen bread like this in bakeries.

I took 1/4 of the dough above and formed it into my bread ball.  While that rested for 30 minutes before baking, I made the topping for the Dutch crunch part of the recipe – which also rested for 30 minutes.

• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1 tablespoon yeast
• 2/3 cup rice flour
• 2 tablespoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil

Mix all of that together and after 30 minutes it rose and looked like this:

I spooned 1/2 cup of that mixture over the top of the dough and baked it at 450 degrees for 20 minutes.

I baked off two loaves – one the Dutch crunch and one with cheddar cheese on top.  I also used my Baking Steel so the crust was super crunchy, yet the top is light and chewy.   Rice flour is not cheap – this Bob’s Red Mill package was $5.99, but luckily my grocery store just got an app, and if I downloaded the app I could get $5 off my grocery purchase, so it basically cost me $1.

I tagged Zoe (one of the co-authors of Artisan in 5 Bread) on Instagram, and she replied! 

Then it was on to make Hannah’s soup.  It’s actually not unhealthy at all – the recipe I followed was for Panera’s Copycat Chicken and Wild Rice soup from Fake Ginger.  It only has 1/4 cup of heavy cream in the whole recipe.   Her secret was using this wild rice package with the seasoning packet:

Hannah gave this two big thumbs up – and even ate the tiny diced chicken.  Nice!

It’s a work day for me today!   I am in Lincoln Square for a private party for 25 people.  The theme is “Italian Night Out.”  Should be fun.

And you’ll be happy (or sad?!) to know that Victoria Z emailed me to claim her prize for my 8 year blog anniversary.  I’ll be shipping her stuff off to her tomorrow.

Make it a great day!