Tricks for Amish White Bread
I have been making yeast dough for about 40 years. My wife and I had 4 children and when they were growing up I would whip up a couple of loaves of french bread on a fairly regular basis. Recently, in honor of Julia Child's 100 year anniversary, I found her french bread recipe rewritten for instant yeast. I am a retired mechanical engineer and for a fair part of my proffessional life I was the chief engineer in very large processing factories. I was exposed to a great deal of technology and I continue to learn about breads. Now days I'll usually bake 1-2 loaves of Amish White bread every week. We have a number of people who like to get a free loaf. It costs me about 20 cents to make a loaf.
We bought a new Hobart N-50 mixer after my first Kitchenaide broke and the next Kitchenaide vibrated of the counter and broke hitting the floor. We still have an older Kitchenaide but I don't use either mixer when making french bread or Amish White Bread. I use an inexpensive 11 cup Cuisinart food processor. Some of the tricks I've learned over the years can help anyone wanting to make cookbook picture loaves.
1. Buy an inexpensive infrared thermometer. The one I use was built for more technical reasons but you don't need to have emisivity settings on yours.
2. Get a bread pal for slicing your loaves. It comes in the enhanced package with a great bread knife and bags that will hold an entire loaf of Amish White Bread.
3. Don't slice the bread until it has cooled and preferably been refrigerated and then only cut what you need.
4. Salt and sugar are curing agents and too much of either will kill your yeast.
5. Buy or have a friend buy you the 2 1 pound vacuum packed packages of yeast from Sam's Club. I just checked the price online and it was $4.74 without tax for the two 1 pound packages.
6. There are 16 tablespoons to the cup and if you seal it properly in a ziplock gallon bag it will last a very long time in the fridge.
7. The Amish White Bread recipe I use calls for 1 cup of water and 1/3 cup of sugar.
8. put 1/2 cup of filtered water in one plastic glass with the 1/3 cup of sugar.
9. put the other 1/2 cup of filtered water in another plastic glass.
10. If your yeast has been opened and is refrigerated follow the next set of instructions (using food processor)
10a. Put the sugar water in the microwave for about 45 seconds and mix thoroughly. The temperature should be around 143F
10b. Put about about 1-1/2 cups of flour in your 11 cup food processor or stand mixer and pour all of the sugar water in. Use the chopping blade or regular mixing beater to blend with a tablespoon of oil and a half tablespoon of salt.
10c. Put a half tablespoon of sugar and 1/2 tablespoon of flour in the other 1/2 cup of water and microwave for about 23 seconds. Shoot the temp. With your IR gun to make sure it is less than 120F but greater than 115F.
10D. Add the cold 1 tablespoon of yeast and mix quickly.
10E. Add a couple of tablespoons of flour to the sponge and pour all of the yeast mix in and quickly mix with the chopping blade or beater.
11. Now it's time for the kneading hook or kneading blade.
12. Add flour as needed but keep it on the moist side.
13. Hand knead when the dough is still on the sticky side but not right.
14. Spray your mixing bowl with oil and put the lump of dough in and hand knead a bit so that the dough is oily on the outside.
15. Get you oven up to about 100F spray a bit of water on the lump and cover with a wet tea towel. Let rise for 50 minutes
16. Use a clay bread pan that is at least 9"X51/4"
17. after the 50 minute rise take bowl out and hand knead. Then with both hands roll to let bottom half sag then reverse and let the other end sag. Do this until the dough is heavy in the center and long enough to fit lengthwise in the bread pan.
18. Hand form to a standard loaf shape and spray oil around the edges of the pan.
19. Spray a little water on top of dough and put in 100F oven to rise for 50 minutes.
20 remove and set oven to 350F
21 as soon as oven reaches 350 put pan in oven and bake for 30 minutes
Hello!
thank you for the tips.
Would you please tell me how much flour (and what brand of flour) do you use for this amount of dough? Without knowing how much flour is in your dough, its weight, and the kind of flour you use, it is impossible to achieve the same taste and looks.
Would you please show your clay bread pan and your picture perfect loaf? I would like to know what to aim at.
Thank you!
m.
I apologize Mariana for not getting back to you sooner. The recipe to get it to come out like the photo of a book on bread baking is long and I think I've posted it on at least two different recipe blogs. Most of the recipes that I have read call for 3/4 tablespoon of instant yeast. I use a full tablespoon. The other things that I do make a big difference when they are combined. I start with about 1 cup of bread flour to which I add 2 tablespoons of wheat gluten and two tablespoons of dough enhancer for professional bakers that can be found on Amazon or you can buy directly from the seller and save money. If you look for the product on Amazon, you should find my screen name in the reviews. They are a great seller. I then pour about 1-1/2 tablespoons of oil into the flour and just shy of a tablespoon of salt nto the mix. You should start with 2 teaspoons. I then use 3 large plastic glasses to divi up the yeast brew and the liquid brew. Since sugar and salt are both preservatives, you want to keep your yeast away from the sugar mix a best as possible in the beginning. I partially fill a 32 ounce, give or take, plastic glass with cold filtered water from the fridge. I then use a 1/2 cup to measure out 1/2 cup plus about a tablespoon of the filtered water for the other two glasses. The ideal temperature for instant yeast is 95 F. You may have read numerous times not to proof instant yeast. What I do is in the first glass with the 1/2+ cup of water is add about 1/2 tablespoon of bread flour and 1 teaspoon of sugar then stir vigorousl. For the second glass with 1/2 cup+ filtered water I add 1/3 cup sugar. I set the microwave on high power and heat the sugar water for about 44 seconds. I then stir that very well so that all of the sugar is dissolved. I pour the hot sugar water into the flour mixture aforementioned and use the regular paddle on a KitchenAid mixer. Once its well mixed, take the other water mix and heat to around 104 F. If your instant yeast is coming out of the freezer which is a good place to store it, when you add 1 tablespoon of cold yeast the temperature should drop. Now look at the consistency of what's in your mixing bowl. Pour in some more flour but make sure it's less than 1 cup. Attach the kneading hook and pour the proofed yeast water on top of the fresh unmixed bread flour. Now it's time to knead the entire mixture adding small amounts of flour as you go. Don't add enough flour for the mixture to become two balls like shown in the directions. However, continue to knead for about 4 minutes with a small wet portion stuck at the bottom of the bowl. Once its been well kneaded, pour a splash of more oil into the bowl and grab up all of the dough that you can and hand knead pulling up the splash of oil to lubricate the sides of the bowl. When the dough is well kneaded in your hands, place it back in the lubricated bowl and push down on the center to make a dimple. Get a fresh tea towel or any towel and get it wet with warm water. Squeeze off the bulk of the water leaving just enough to squeeze a tiny portion into the dimple then cover the bowl with the wet towel. I pretext our upper oven to about 100 to 105 F and place the bowl in the that oven to rise for 60 minutes. When the timer goes off, put on a pair of surgical gloves and use solid Crisco to lube your ceramic loaf pan. use a paper towel to clean up excess. Now remove the risen dough and pound it in your hands to ensure that all of the CO2 gas bubbles that formed during the first rise are gone. Hand roll the dough a bit to fit lengthwise in your loaf pan. Now push down the dough working from the center out to the sides and ends. Push your fingers down surrounding the entire loaf so as to leave a clean gap between all sides. Smooth out the surface using a spray bottle if necessary. The gaps will quickly disappear. Place the loaf pan back in the oven and preheat again to 100-105 F and let rise for 60 minutes. We have double ovens and since they are electric, it takes over 20 minutes for the temperature to reach the baking temperature of 350 F which must be included in the 60 minutes. I remove mine from the upper oven after 40 minutes and place the loaf pan in the lower oven then start preheating the upper oven to 350. When I'm alerted that the oven has reached 350 I carefully remove the loafpan from the lower oven and place it in the heated oven. I set the timer at 26 minutes. When the timer goes off, I turn off the timer and the oven and remove the loafpan and place it in the lower oven to cool. Once it's cooled to room temperature I place the loaf in a bread bag and then tie off bag with a bag tie. I then place the whole loaf in the fridge to cool before slicing.
i don't measure the amount of flour I use unless I'm making rye bread in which case I only measure the rye flour. I hope you end up with a perfect loaf that is extremely airy and not nearly as dense as some loaves I've seen. The biggest reason for this is, in my opinion, keeping the sugar mix away from the yeast as much and as long as possible.
Hello Mariana,
If you do a search for lsume or Tricks for Amish white bread, you should see a photo of a finished loaf still in the oven. I have many photos of various breads I've made and the photo I posted at the aforementioned site is typical. I am guessing that I get 3 to 3.5 times rise for the finished loaf. What I have also found is that by adding two tablespoons of wheat gluten helps the loaf stand as shown in the photo. I would find it to be very difficult to end up with a finished product as shown if I were Amish. An infrared thermometer can be very helpful in the kitchen and they are very inespensive today. Mine was given to me for technical reasons unrelated to cooking. I've made so many loaves of AWB that I really don't need to measure anymore. I do measure the water and yeast though. The temperatures I dont measure. I know my microwave and times necessary for the desired outcome without needing the thermometer.
so far, I've used King Arthur medium rye flour for every loaf. I've found that the price of their medium rye flour is very high when you add the shipping cost. Someone shared that Bob's Red Mill light rye flour works as well so I plan to order a smal amount and give it a try. unfortunately, where we live, I can't find any rye flour to date.
thanks
Post the recipe and pics!
-Dave
I'm having trouble pasting my photo here. Perhaps you could help. I have many photos of various breads and tried to paste one to my response to no avail.
if you visit Trcks for Amish white bread, you should now see a photo I took while the loaf was still in the oven. What I've found is that by adding 2 tablespoons of wheat gluten to the bread dough the loaf doesn't fall but a little.
If you look for my recipe for Amish white bread, you will see a recipe that has been changed since I first posted it. I no longer use the Proffesional dough enhancer for one change. I've found that using about 2-1/2 tablespoons of Vital Wheat Gluten works great with medium rye flour by King Arthur or the light rye flour by Bob's Red Mill. The bread holds and tastes great. The first tablespoon is for the rye flour and the second plus 1/2 is for the bread flour that I use. The Amish White Bread recipe i use 1-1/2 tablespoons of Vital Wheat Gluten which is sold by Medley Hill Farm.