BBA Bread #39—Vienna Bread, another rustic bread similar to French or Italian, but with some enrichments.
I'm ONLY THREE BREADS AWAY from baking my way through Peter Reinhart's award winning book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice, along with a number of other amateur bakers (I'm not sure how many are still with us, and a number of us have finished). Want to learn more about it? Check out the following links:
- Pinch My Salt BBA Challenge page—master resource for the challenge
- Buy the Book Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart
- List of Breads See what's coming up.
- Blogroll See who's baking. Great list of some amazing foodie (and not-necessarily-foodie) blogs.
- Flickr Group Photos, photos and more photos!
- Twitter Search for #BBAC to find challenge tweets.
So the only thing I remember about this bread is that it gets the "Dutch crunch" topping. That's probably a bad sign, don't you think? I don't recall NOT liking it (how's that for a double negative) but it must have been pretty non-descript for me to remember almost nothing about it.
It's an old-fashioned rustic bread, like some others we've done, but this is enriched with an egg, a tiny bit of sugar and butter and a bit of diastatic malt powder to help with color. Italian bread was the other rustic bread to use malt powder.
The Vienna bread also introduces a new technique for bread topping called "Dutch crunch" which involves rice flour, regular flour, yeast, sugar, salt, oil and water. You make a paste then spread it on top of the shaped bread before proofing. It was an interesting procedure and technique, but a bit anti climatic for me.
The verdict: A good if forgettable loaf.
This Vienna bread is one of our favorites. I had started the BBA Challenge but last year wound up taking a job as an agency photo editor. It turned into about 70 hours a week for awhile and much of the baking fell by the wayside. While I did continue with the actual baking, the last thing I wanted to do at the end of the day was to pick up a camera and write about it. No matter. Peter Reinhardt is one of the best authors around and much was learned. Still one of my favorite books.
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