sandwich bread

 

 

Procrastinator's Sandwich Bread: Take 2

Continued from Procrastinator's Sandwich Bread.

So, while I was impressed with the taste and texture of the previous PSB, I still don't like the idea of all white bread. I grew up on white bread; my mother bought sandwich loaves from the grocery store like most busy moms, especially since she had little talent in yeasted baking, and my grandfather's specialty was potato bread. And while tasty, and surely better than the store-bought loaves, it still wasn't any paragon of nutrition. It took me a long time to like the taste of whole grains, but now I seemed to have flipped the other way... I don't really like white bread. I'll tolerate it, but I prefer whole grain.

And to make it even more difficult, I don't really like wheat -- at least, by itself. I find it bitter, and frankly, I don't do bitter. But I love rye, and barley, and corn, and oats, and... well, you get the picture. I actually really like white wheat, because of its less-bitter taste, but it's much harder to find for a good price. Red wheat is plentiful and cheap, so I just find it easier to mix it with other grains, or sweeten it, etc. Even white wheat has a bold flavor, though. You notice it right away. This isn't a bad thing, but it isn't what I wanted in this bread. I wanted subtle, behind-the-scenes flavor. The kind that makes you go, "Hmm, what is this? This is different. This is good."

So I chose barley. Mild, slightly sweet, and a perfect backdrop for the flax already in the recipe. This time, I chose to use only 1 cup of barley flour and 4 cups of bread flour. I need to know the threshold of the bread, when it goes from just enough whole grains to too much. I intend to gradually step up the amount of barley flour I use until I find it negatively affects the texture, flavor, and/or ease of use of the bread. I don't want to have to coddle this bread because it has whole grains. If I have to coddle it, I won't make it regularly. And that sort of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

I show the recipe below for one loaf, though I doubled it this time around and made two loaves. Honestly, this dough is so easy to handle even by hand, I would make massive batches at once, but I only have one oven and two loaf pans. I'm sure if you scaled this out and made a baker's dozen it wouldn't be much more work than it is for one. I scaled back the yeast some this time, to see if it still rose quickly -- I noted little difference in rise times but a big difference in taste. Also, I used half buttermilk, half 1% milk this time around, and sprinkled with barley flakes instead of the 7-grain cereal. Very tasty! Though the barley flakes like to fall off some...

Procrastinator's Sandwich Bread: Barley Edition

 

• .25c butter
• 1c 1% milk
• 1c reduced fat buttermilk
• 2tbsp granulated sugar
• 2tsp kosher salt
• 4c bread flour
• 1c barley flour
• 1tbsp instant yeast
• 2tbsp vital wheat gluten
• 2tbsp ground flax seed
• more milk for brushing
• 1-2tbsp barley flakes (or topping of choice)

 

 

1. Melt butter in microwave in a large measuring cup or bowl. (1 min on HIGH for me.)
2. Add milk and heat to lukewarm. (1 more min on HIGH for me.)
3. Add sugar and salt and stir to dissolve.
4. Combine flours, yeast, gluten, and flax in a large bowl/the bowl of a stand mixer.
5. Add liquid and mix to "shaggy mass" stage.
6. Knead by hand or mixer until elastic. Dough will NOT clean bowl or form a ball; this is fine.
7. Let rise until double, about 35 mins.
8. Shape into a loaf, and put in greased 9x5in pan.
9. Preheat oven to 350F; let dough rise 25-30 mins.
10. Brush with milk and sprinkle barley flakes on top, then score loaf as desired. (I always do mine diagonally, corner to corner.)
11. Bake for 25 mins uncovered, with steam, then cover with foil and bake another 20-35 mins, until internal temp is 190F.

Pictures to come tomorrow, when I un-lazy enough to upload them to my computer. LOL

 

 

 

I had some fun creating bread that was filled with chocolate.   Adapted from Reinhart's Soft Sandwich Bread in Artisan Breads Every Day.  It turned out a little dry,  but overall, I like the chocolaty taste.  

 

 

Read the detailed blog here.

 

 

Necessity is the mother of invention (or at least tweaking), right? It certainly is around here! I came to TFL (naturally) to find a solution to my problem: there was no more sandwich bread in my house. This is about as big a problem as no running water. My middle child is addicted to peanut butter sandwiches, and since she has a limited number of "healthy" foods she likes, we encourage her to eat them. (She's autistic; trying to get her to eat food she doesn't like/want is... well, next to impossible. Frankly, I'm just happy she eats anything but hot dogs and fruit snacks.) My usual recipe takes 4-5 hours, depending on the temp of my kitchen that day, and that just wasn't gonna cut it today. I needed something fast and simple.

I did a search for "basic white sandwich bread" and came up with a bunch of results, but near the top of the list was this post, with its GUMP Bread recipe. It had no comments, so no tried-and-true reviews or try-this adjustments, so I took it entirely on faith. The list of ingredients looked right, in proper amounts for a high-hydration sandwich loaf, so I figured how bad could it really turn out?

I made some adjustments for personal preference... butter for oil, regular milk for powdered milk and water, and flax seed for wheat germ. That last because I'd run out of wheat germ, not because I have something against it. And because I didn't have smaller loaf pans, I decided to make it all one loaf in my rockin' huge 9x5 Paula Deen stoneware loaf pan. These things are wicked deep and heat so evenly... I love them. I really do. And I thought to add vital wheat gluten because I'd heard it makes white bread do something interesting. (Very scientific, I know. LOL) So once I'd settled on all my ingredients and my loaf size, etc., I set about actually making the thing...

Procrastinator's Sandiwch Bread

• .25c butter
• 2c 1% milk
• 2tbsp granulated sugar
• 2tsp kosher salt
• 5c bread flour
• 4tsp instant yeast
• 1tbsp vital wheat gluten
• 2tbsp ground flax seed
• more milk for brushing
• 1tbsp 7-grain cereal

1. Melt butter in microwave in a large measuring cup or bowl. (1 min on HIGH for me.)
2. Add milk and heat to lukewarm. (1 more min on HIGH for me.)
3. Add sugar and salt and stir to dissolve.
4. Combine flour, yeast, gluten, and flax in a large bowl/the bowl of a stand mixer.
5. Add liquid and mix to "shaggy mass" stage.
6. Knead by hand or mixer until elastic. Dough will NOT clean bowl or form a ball; this is fine.
7. Let rise until double, about 30 mins.
8. Shape into a loaf, and put in greased 9x5in pan.
9. Preheat oven to 350F; let dough rise 20-25 mins.
10. Brush with milk and sprinkle 7-grain cereal on top, then score loaf as desired. (I always do mine diagonally, corner to corner.)
11. Bake for 25 mins uncovered, with steam, then cover with foil and bake another 20-35 mins, until internal temp is 190F.

Now, since I really like how this turned out texture-wise, I intend to try cutting the yeast to about 1tsp, maybe 1.5tsp, and do an overnight rise in the fridge. Or somewhere else equally cold; this is Michigan, I'm sure I can find somewhere to put it this time of year! I think it'll really improve the flavor. But then it wouldn't be a procrastinator's bread, it'd just be a tasty sandwich loaf. I think I'm okay with that. ;)

 

Edited To Add: the pictures I completely forgot about...

Nevermind the foil. I like softer crust, so I let the loaf steam itself soft-ish for a few.

Crumb shot. It's very fine and tender, but it still has more flavor than that crappy Wonderbread. :P

Crumb close-up.

Hi there all the bread lovers.

I'm Ilan, I work in the Hi-Tech industry for the last 10 years which means that I have very little time for myself or my family during the week.

For the last few years, I find comfort in the kitchen, cooking for me, my wife and our extended family. It became a therapy for me - after a long week of work I prefer to cook for 10 people instead of having a good weekend rest.

Bread fascinated me for a long time and about two year ago, I started to bake my own bread.

At first, it came out very bitter and not soft or crunchy but we ate it any way. Very few things can compare with home made bread, hot and fresh out of the oven.

Trying to get better at baking bread, I turned to web. There I discovered the importance of kneading the dough for longer time , the importance of long rising and letting it rise again after shaping, scoring and more.

The quality of the bread improve dramatically and the variety of the loaves increased.

 

All of this time I continued cooking and about 6 months ago I went to a cooking school. Beside improving my cooking skills, I had long chats with my teaching Chef about many issues, bread included. He strongly recommended this website and I'm glad he did.

As a good student, I decided to start from the beginning and go through the lessons here.

I found out that most of the bread loaves I baked so far, resembled the most to the loaf in lesson 2 ( http://www.thefreshloaf.com/lessons/addingmore ) although i haven't used this much milk in a bread before, I took the exact recipe and went for it.

I messed up with the scoring on this one, but all in all, the result was very pleasing:

 

 

After two years of baking bread (on the weekends) I just started to realize how rich is this world.

It looks like I found one of my favorites places in the web.

In the ever-constant quest for a sandwich bread my picky 7 year old will eat, I search and try a lot of breads.  Yesterday I came upon Farmhouse White from A Year in Bread blog.  It sounded good to me, so I entered the info into my sourdough converter (first time using it) that I downloaded from Mike on SourdoughHome.com. I made smaller loaves and ended up with 4 so, so oh darn I made that one cinnimon swirl bread.  My starter is 100% hydration started and I put in about one cup of whole wheat flour and then 5 tsp of Vital wheat gluten since I was using Gold Medal AP Flour along with the C of WW.  I almost broke my Kitchenaid while mixing the dough and had to move to a stretch and fold form of kneading before bulk fermentation for a couple of hours.  I then shaped the loaves and covered them with a damp cloth in the fridge for a slow rise over night. 

So, I start the quest for a good, high-powered higher capacity dough mixer.  But, the bread turned out GREAT!

Most of the content is Susan's from the blog and all of the pictures are hers.  I have included hyperlinks to the 2 websites to which I refer.  Enjoy!

Susan's Farmhouse White Sandwich Bread - from A Year in Bread
Makes 3 loaves, approximately 1-1/2 pounds each

Ingredient US volume Metric Volume US weight Metric
organic all-purpose flour 4 cups - 940 ml - 1 lb, 4 ounces - 566 grams
instant yeast** 2 Tablespoons - 30 ml - 22 grams
granulated sugar 2 Tablespoons - 30 ml - 28 grams
canola oil 2 Tablespoons - 30 ml - 30 grams
warm milk (or water) 4 cups - 940 ml - 2 lbs - 908 grams
organic bread flour (approximately) 6 cups - 1,410 ml - 1 lb, 13-1/8 ounces - 825 grams
salt 1½ Tablespoons - 22 ml - 3/4 ounce - 22 grams

**To bake an even better loaf, you can reduce the amount of yeast to 1½ Tablespoons (or even 1 Tablespoon). This will make your dough rise more slowly, so you'll just need to increase the fermenting and proofing times. You can reduce the yeast in pretty much any bread recipe—a lot of bakers go by the formula 'half the yeast and double the rising time.'

MY Changes were: 

0.43	Kilos	Starter
0.56	Kilos	Milk or water
0.27	Kilos	all purpose White Flour
0.71	Kilos	Bread Flour (or high protein flour)
0.02	Kilos	Salt
0.02	Kilos	Sugar
0.02	Kilos	Canola Oil
2/3 Cups Dried mild powder can be added to the recipe
May add vital gluten to AP flour to increase protein/glutein of
flour at 1.5 tsp per C of AP flour (especially if using a wholemeal)

Mixing and fermentation

Autolyse
Autolyse (pronounced AUTO-lees and used as both a noun and a verb) is a French word that refers to a rest period given to dough during the kneading process. When making your dough, mix together only the water, yeast, flour, and grains until it forms a shaggy mass. Knead it for several minutes, and then cover the dough and let it rest for 20 minutes. (I simply leave the dough on the floured counter and put my wooden bowl over it.) During this time, the gluten will relax and the dough will absorb more water, smoothing itself out so that it is moist and easier to shape. After the autolyse, knead the dough for several more minutes, mixing in any other ingredients such as herbs or nuts or dried fruit.

In a very large bowl, stir together the all-purpose flour, yeast, and sugar (I use a wooden spoon). Make a small well in the middle of the flour mixture and pour in the canola oil and then the milk. Mix well, then continue to stir vigorously, slowly adding 1 cup of the bread flour at a time, until you've added about 5 cups, or until you have a soft, slightly sticky dough; this should take several minutes.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for about 6 or 7 minutes, adding more flour as necessary to keep the dough from sticking to your hands or the work surface.

Place the mixing bowl over the dough, and let it rest for 20 minutes. This rest period is called the autolyse.



Remove the bowl, flatten out the dough with your hands, and sprinkle about half of the salt over it. Begin kneading the salt into the dough. After a few turns, sprinkle on the rest of the salt and continue to knead for 5 to 7 minutes, until the salt is completely incorporated and the dough is soft and smooth.

Sprinkle flour in the dough bowl, place the dough in it, liberally dust it with flour, and cover it with a damp tea towel (not terry cloth, as it will shed lint on your dough). Or put it in a straight sided plastic container with a snap-on lid and mark the spot on the container that the dough will reach when it has doubled in volume.

Set the dough somewhere that is preferably between 70°F and 75°F until it has doubled in size, about 60 to 75 minutes. Ideally, the dough should also be between 70°F and 75°F. It's fine if your dough is cooler; it'll just take longer to rise and will end up even tastier. It's easy to check the temperature of your dough and ingredients with an inexpensive instant read thermometer.

When the dough is ready to be shaped, you should be able to push a floured finger deep into it and leave an indentation that doesn't spring back. Unless your dough is rising in a straight-sided container, it can be difficult to judge whether it has "doubled in size" which is the guideline most recipes use. I find the finger poking method to be more reliable, though lately I've been letting all my doughs rise in plastic containers.

Shaping and final rise (proof)
Turn the risen dough out onto a lightly floured work surface, flattening gently with your hands to break up any large air bubbles. Divide the dough into three equal pieces.

Shape the dough into loaves and dust the tops with flour. There are dozens of ways to do this; for the way I like to do it, check out this post on how to shape dough into sandwich loaves. Place loaves seam side down in greased loaf pans. I like my sandwich breads to be tall, so I use smaller loaf pans. I can't say enough good things about these commercial loaf pans from Chicago Metallic. They call this size a 1-pound loaf pan, and it measures 8-1/2 inches x 4-1/2 inches and is just under 3 inches tall. For the price of a few loaves of bread, they're definitely worth the investment—and with a 25-year warranty. Chicago Metallic also makes this larger 1½ pound size pan for those of you who prefer a wider, shorter loaf.

Cover the loaves with a damp tea towel and let them rise for 45 to 60 minutes. When you lightly poke the dough with a floured finger it should spring back just a little.

If you let the loaves rise too long, they may not have enough energy left to rise once they're in the oven--and they may even collapse. I was always so afraid this would happen that for years I unknowingly under-proofed my loaves of Farmhouse White.



While the bread was still delicious, you can see that the dough had so much 'oven spring' that it basically blew apart the side of the loaf. I finally started letting the loaves rise a little longer and was rewarded with the more evenly shaped and visually appealing bread that you see in the top two photos.

Bake at 375° for 35 minutes or until the loaves are golden brown and the bottoms sound hollow if tapped. Remove immediately from pans and let cool on a wire rack. Try to wait at least 40 minutes before cutting into a loaf. Store at room temperature or freeze in zipper freezer bags. Make sure loaves are completely cooled before sealing in bags.

Update: I've started baking all of my pan loaves on a heated baking stone (in order to simulate the ceramic hearth deck of my 7-foot wide commercial deck oven in the someday-bread-bakery-to-be), and the results have been wonderful. The bottoms of the loaves are nice and evenly brown, and I think that extra initial burst of heat makes the loaves end up even taller. Just like with pizzas and freeform loaves, you need to preheat your stone so that it's nice and hot when you put the bread in. Since Farmhouse White bakes at just 375°, 30 to 45 minutes is usually enough.

It is my girlfriends birthday today so I decided to make her a special breakfast! I had eyeballed the butter scones from Advanced Bread and Pastries before but seeing as how they are so rich I didn't want to make them save for a special occasion. Here in sweden a scone is more akin to Soda Bread than the sweetish style scones you get in Britain och America.

I managed to make them up the day before without my girlfriend noticing and refrigerate them overnight so that I could bake them for here first thing in the morning. I think they turned out pretty good, and my girlfriend did like them so I'm set!

 

I have also finally taken the plunge and aquired a Pullman pan for myself, maybe a 1.5kg loaf of tasty toast bread is too much for a two person family but maybe a 2.5kg loaf of Vollkornbrot might not be enoguh? hmm.. might have to share any attempts at Vollkornbrot with friends or there will be leftovers for ever! Here the pullman pan Is shown beside my regular breadpan.

and here is how a loaf of sourdough sandwich bread turned out, tasty! This is the same bread I have blogged about earlier, with a formula developed by me. Unfortunately the picture is insanely yellow, but that is due to poor lighting when I took the picture.

This is a secret too, but I have also made two mini cheesecakes for tonights dinner wich I am making for my girlfriend, hope that they are tasty..