Vienna with Crunch-Cool!
A few days ago, dvuong posted a beautiful image of Vienna bread with a Dutch Crunch [1] topping applied. It was so beautiful I just had to try it for myself. I went straight to my copy of Reinharts BBA and followed the instructions for Vienna Bread and the following add in for the history and suggestions for Dutch Crunch. I learned that there are several variations including corn meal and farina that will work, providing different flavors. I thought I would stick with the white rice flour this time and try to duplicate the results posted by dvuong.
As you can see, I didn't get quite the same degree of cracking but never the less, still quite nice. Since there is yeast in the crunch topping, there are some controls available that I have to tinker with in future bakes.
So for anyone thinking about this bread, go for it. The crunch topping is easy to make up and if you don't have rice flour, try fine cornmeal.
Eric