Great white bread (oxymoron or reality?)

Well, I have been gone for a couple of years, hardly having time to make bread let alone blog about it. But I just couldn't not tell you all about this latest accomplishment. And sorry up front for the seeming brags. Just passing on excitement.

Several years ago I finally succeeded in making fabulous sourdough. It's the best I have ever tasted and most who receive a loaf say the same thing. So I thought that fulfilling a life-long ambition would satisfy me, and it nearly did. But the sourdough takes two days and the second day requires availability to finish the process and bake it at the optimum time (a little whine with your bread?). That is not always available each week so for the past year or so I have been either doing without and eating store crap or resorting to shorter process breads to fill the gap. The first choice in that direction was to replicate my mother's whole wheat recipe with my newly acquired knowledge. I produced an excellent sandwich bread using Peter Reinhart's 50% epoxy recipe with only minor changes. It takes at least 12 hours usually over two calendar days but it is still easier to finish on a tight schedule.

So I had a few friends over for breakfast on Sunday, feeding them my specialty pancakes, which they loved. They will be over again next Sunday and I can't possibly feed them the same thing so I thought I would do my specialty french toast. But again, I can't feed them store-bought bread! So I thought I would try my latest recipe of 25% WW and no epoxy method but with only AP specifically for making french toast. Then I got the wild idea. I usually put in some amount of honey and butter/marg in the WW, varying each time to see what happens. For this recipe I decided to put in a quarter pound of real butter and only a little sugar. Wow.

It smelled different while baking. Now, I don't usually fall apart over ANY white bread with commercial yeast because it just doesn't have great flavor. It's better than store crap but nowhere near as good as WW or sourdough. And this new recipe might not be either, but it is the best straight white I have ever made. By that I mean w/o rosemary and olive oil.

This is what it looks like:

and a close-up of the crumb:

The flavor is what you might expect from that much butter. It is rich and flavorful, not floury or yeasty or overly sweet. If it lasts to the weekend I expect it to make great french toast. I don't know that I would want to make a ham sandwich out of it, but for general breakfast food like toast or for PB&J, it is really exciting.

Here's the recipe if you are interested:

625 g AP flour

1/2 tsp instant yeast

425 g water

Mix this together. It will be fairly tight and sticky. Let it ferment at least until doubled, I went about 8 hours in a cold kitchen.

Then in a stand mixer add:

2 tsp yeast

2 tsp salt

2 tbsp sugar

1/4 lb butter

75 g AP flour

Mix together until the butter is distributed and homogenous, with the paddle. Change to the hook and mix until it comes together and pulls away from the sides of the bowl, another 5 minutes or so on a medium speed.

Let rise until at least double, then make two loaves and let rise again. My pans are the basic 9"x5"x2.75" folded sheetmetal jobs. Spray them. When the dough rises about an inch to an inch and a half above the edges of the pans, put in 425F oven, reduce heat to 375F for 35 minutes, rotating once to even the coloring.

Because the texture in the first 24 hours is still soft I intend to let it get stale-ish before slicing and freezing to keep until Sunday.

That's my story,

Lee