Today’s recipe is a great and simple one, for a soft and tasty sandwich bread. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced baker, this recipe will yield fantastic results.
The story behind the recipe is thus: for weeks I’ve been trying to bake the perfect sourdough loaf, airy and crunchy, slightly sour and super tasty. Which means that I’ve been growing yeasts and starters, learned all about hydration and argued with the dough for days. And then I wanted to test another recipe (on the blog soon) so I had to bake this easy, yeasty bread to which HE said: ”This is the best bread you’ve ever made. Please bake this one every week.” Naturally I didn’t go for that, but it made me stop and reflect and give myself and the sourdough a much needed break. Kitchen lesson for life: what you push will deflate, what you let be will proof. Recipe follows.
Sandwich bread
Ingredients
YEAST MIXTURE
- 175 ml water
- 125 ml milk
- 1 tbsp (9 g) dry yeast
DOUGH
- 460 g strong flour
- 1 1/2 tsp (8 g) salt
- 1 tbsp (15 g) sugar
- 3 tbsp (40-45 g) butter room temperature
Instructions
YEAST MIXTURE
- Mix the water and milk and heat up to anywhere between 35-40°C.
- Mix in the yeast, cover and leave for 10 minutes.
DOUGH
- While the yeast is bubbling, mix well the flour, salt and sugar.
- Make a well in the middle and gently pour in the yeast mixture. Knead until you get a smooth, slightly sticky dough, approximately 5 minutes.
- Add one tbsp of butter and knead for a minute. Then add the second tbsp of butter and knead for a minute. Finally add the third tablespoon of butter and knead 3-5 minutes, until the dough absorbs the butter and becomes smooth and non greasy.
- Transfer to a lightly dusted surface and shape into a ball. Place the ball in a greased bowl, cover and place in a warm area until doubled in volume, 60-90 minutes.
- Grease the bread pan (mine is 20x10 cm) with butter.
- Punch the dough to deflate and transfer to a lightly floured surface. Roll the dough into rectangular shape, 20 cm wide (as wide as the longest side of you bread pan) and 1 cm thick.
- Roll into a cylinder shape, tuck the edges and place in a pan. Cover with a damp towel, or another bread pan and leave to double in size again, 45-60 minutes.
- Place the bread in the middle of the preheated oven (180°C) and bake for 35-40 minutes, or until golden.
- Take out of the pan, place on the cooling rack and let it cool completely (!).
Couple of post-recipe bullet points:
- Adding the butter, you’ll think this recipe is horrible. Keep kneading and it’ll turn out fine.
- When rolling out the dough, make sure it’s evenly thick, otherwise you’ll end up with a bread that’s not even in height (like me this time).
- Please please please let it cool completely before cutting it. We didn’t because it was 9 pm and didn’t want to wait. It’s hard to cut, moves around and breaks (tastes fantastic still).
T 🙂
