Soft Wheat Sandwich Bread

There are some things in cooking that aren’t glamorous or wonderful at first glance.  They aren’t expensive and the ingredients are things you can buy in any grocery store.  But these are the things that can seriously change your life.  In my mind these small things are what I’m really learning to love about baking and cooking.  I’m talking about homemade sandwich bread!

I’ve been making no knead bread for awhile now and Betsy and I have become used to using it for our weekly sandwich bread.  Every once in awhile though I want the kind of bread that you see in a store, but I don’t want store bought bread.  This bread fits the bill except it tastes nothing like the pre-sliced stuff you buy at the Safeway.

Light Wheat Sandwich Bread (From the Bread Baker’s Apprentice)

- 11.25 ounces (2.5 Cups) bread flour
- 6.75 ounces (1.5 Cups) whole wheat flour
- .75 ounces (1.5 Tablespoons) sugar
- .38 ounces (1.5 Teaspoons) salt
- 1 ounce (3 Tablespoons) powdered milk
- .17 ounces (1 1/2 Teaspoons) instant yeast
- 1 ounce (2 Tablespoons) unsalted butter
- 10 ounces (1 1/4 Cups) water, at room temp

When baking I always weigh my ingredients (at least my flour), but if you don’t have a scale, by all means give it a shot with the volume measurements.

Also, you may notice a few odd ingredients (powdered milk).  It works out though.  It gives the bread a really soft texture that makes good sandwich bread and also really good toast.

First thing first, mix up all those dry ingredients.  Stir them together really well.

Add your water to these dry ingredients until the dough forms a soft ball.  As Reinhart says in the book, it is better to have the ball be a bit too soft then too hard.  In other words. dry bread sucks.

If you have a fancy mixer, by all means, you can mix the dough in that for 10 minutes with the dough hook on medium speed.  Or you can knead the dough for about fifteen minutes on your counter.

To test when your dough is ready, tear off a piece and slowly stretch it.  Eventually you will be able to see light through it.  Otherwise known as the windowpane test.

Below isn’t the best photo.  Ideally it would be stretched out a bit more, but I needed one hand to shoot the darn photo.

Kneading is one of those things that I enjoy.  Apparently, I’m not the only one.

Anyway, when your dough is done, put it in a lightly oiled bowl, turn it once to cover all sides with a light coat of oil, cover and let rise for 2 hours at room temperature.  It will easily double in size.

Now pull the dough out and flatten it into a rectangle.  Using about three folds, roll the rectangle into a loaf form and then roll it out evenly.

The loaf should fit perfectly into a 8.5 inch loaf pan.  If it doesn’t then, well, make it fit.

Cover this again and let it rise for another 90 minutes or until the dough rises over the edge of the pan.  Looks about like this:

Bake this for 30 minutes in a pre-heated 350 degree oven.  Then rotate the loaf 180 degrees so it cooks evenly and let it cook for another 15 to 30 minutes.

The book recommends testing the internal temp of the loaf with a thermometer.  It should register 190 degrees in the center.  I just waited until it looked nice and golden brown around the edges.

Remove this immediately from the loaf pan and then cool it on a rack.  If you thump the loaf, it should sound hollow.  It will be tough, but this needs to cool for at least one hour (ideally two hours) before you slice into it.  Don’t worry.  It will still be plenty warm.

I really liked this bread.  Betsy said that she still prefers the no knead bread, but I go back and forth.  Both are good for different things and depending on how much time you have you should try this.  Be careful though.  Once you eat this, you won’t want to pay $5 for store bought bread ever again.