Dutch Crunch Gets its Close-Up

For those of you who missed it, Serious Eats yesterday ran a lengthy treatise on one of our region’s under-celebrated foods, the Dutch Crunch roll. This peculiar little foodstuff is taken so much for granted that we didn’t even realize how local it was until Carey Jones reminded us it’s practically unavailable outside the Bay Area. Did you ever wonder how they get the crunchy top on there? “The bread is coated with a wash of rice flour, butter, sugar, and yeast. In the oven, the top crust splits and browns, giving us that distinctive streaked or spotted crust.” There you go. As for the name, it seems the bread bears some resemblance to a similar Dutch product called Tijgerbrood (Tiger Bread), but that still doesn’t explain why it’s such a localized thing. That lingering question aside, we’re suddenly very hungry. [Via Serious Eats]

Photo via star5112/flickr

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Dutch Crunch Gets its Close-Up