Does anyone have a great Artisan-type white sandwich bread recipe Please?
Good afternoon!
I am trying to find a really good, dense, Artisan-type white sandwich bread recipe to make for my family.
My husband is from the Netherlands, and he does not care for how soft the average white bread is that we get here in our grocery stores. Compared to the white bread that his mom gets from their open air markets, there is a HUGE difference.
The European white bread is very healthy, dense, and it tastes divine! It does not fall apart when condiments are spread on it, (they use butter as their mayonnaise), and when you toast the bread it tastes so great! It has a nice crunchy crust, and a good chewy texture on the inside.
Since my husband loves this type of bread, I set out to learn how to make it at home with my KA 600. I have gotten the French Baguette down to a science, even with the slashing when it goes in the oven, which took me forever and a day not to deflate the loaf when I tried the slashing..and now they come out looking really nice and tasting yummy!
Here at our local Sam's Club, there is a bread made by a company called Milton's Original Healthy Grain Bread. It comes in loaves of 2, and it is very reasonably priced at Sam's. However, Sam's is going to discontinue it, and that has started me on this quest to find a recipe that I can make at home. Milton's has the texture that I am seeking. They make 2 different types of white bread, but on their website 1 loaf of either is $12!! I am not paying $12 for 1 loaf of bread.
Please help me if you can! There has to be a good dense recipe somewhere! Thanks so much!
I looked at the site, and I think the $12 is for a case of four 24-ounce loaves.
Rosalie
Thanks for letting me know that. I saw the $12, and I did not even bother to look at the ordering section.
That comes out to be $3 a loaf, which isn't bad. I do wonder how much shipping would add to that, and how long it would take to get here.
I still want to find that perfect recipe for white sandwich bread though..
Thanks so much!
Linda
Linda, you might want to check out AYearInBread.com where Susan shows some good looking white loaves, A.
What are the ingredients listed for that bread? I can check my recipes and see if I have anything similar. I would guess in advance though that Rose Levy Beranbaum's _The Bread Bible_ would have a recipe that would meet your requirements.
sPh
According to their website information, this yummy bread has this in it:
This delicious loaf of bread is 99% fat free, features no preservatives, contains no cholesterol and is made from all natural ingredients. Ingredients include enriched flour, brown rice, honey, brown sugar, cornmeal, rolled oats, wheat bran, black and white sesame seeds, poppy seeds, yeast and salt. Each slice represents 10 percent of the recommended daily allowances (RDA) iron and is fortified with Calcium. It has a chewy nut-like texture. Available in a 24 oz and 40 oz loaf.
I don't know how the Dutch stuff tastes, but white bread from BBA is pretty good, and most people here swear by struan, the recipe for which you can find on the sidebar.
Your post mentioned white bread from BBA. What exactly is BBA? and is there some sort of website for this bread?
Thanks!
Linda
Thanks for the information. I will check out the website that someone mentioned. I have both of the cookbooks that were mentioned. I don't know which recipe will give me the recipe that I am trying to find, so I don't try a lot of them to see. I will try the Struan bread from the Apprentice book and see how it goes. Do I need to get regular brown rice or can I use the instant type? The rolled oats would need to be the ones that I would get from a place like Whole Foods that take 20 minutes or more to cook? Wheat Barley? Would I get that in Whole Foods also? I regularly use King Arthur Bread Flour. What brand of yeast is going to work best? Polenta can be any brand, right?
Thanks for your help!
Hi, Linda, love your Christmas decorations!
Struan is wonderful-- and everyone remarks on what great toast it makes.
Concerning the ingredients, you can certainly use instant brown/white rice--the rice should be cooked first anyway. You could get the non-instant rolled oats but if you have instant on hand it won't matter a bit to use them instead.
The recipe calls for wheat bran, rather, and you can easily find that at Whole Foods.
One lovely thing about Struan is that it can be made precisely according to your tastes and what you have on hand--you can use the suggested grains or you can come up with your own combination.
Polenta can be any brand, yes. It will be soaked so it doesn't come out like pebbles in your baked bread. Instant yeast is popular here but active dry is fine, though you need about a quarter more. Any brand. Just make sure it's fresh.
KA bread flour is slightly higher protein than all-purpose. It yields a bread that is somewhat chewier, and that sounds like just what you're after. Lucky husband!
Let us know how it turns out!
Oh, in case your life isn't complicated enough, here is another, more recent version of struan with a somewhat more involved process. Either will give you very nice bread.
Whenever I am baking bread, with the exception of homemade biscuits, I use the KA flour exlusively. I went to one of their local bread baking classes a few years back and started baking then.
I am glad to know that I don't have to go out and spend a fortune for brand specific ingredients for this bread.
I do try to make things for my husband from his homeland. I have gotten pretty good with 2 of his favorite meals that his mom always made for him when he was growing up.
One of the dishes is called Babi Pangang, which is a pork dish that has Indonesian roots and it is sweet and quite spicy, served over rice. He loves that stuff. I could do without it, but in this instance, it really is about what he wants. I don't cook it often for him, but when I do he is in heaven. When he went home in November, his mom told him that the restaurants where they get this dish have changed something in the dish and it does not taste as good as it used to. She tried making it at home from a recipe and he said that it was okay, but apparently he has gotten used to my spin on it and tells me that what I make tastes better. Go figure!!
The other dish is called Borenkohl, which is simple Kale and mashed potatoes mixed together with beef sausage links steamed on top of the dish. I can most definitely do without this dish! There is a very distinct mix of butter with the potatoes and if you put too much in there, it changes the whole dish. It is his favorite winter time dish. Lucky for me, he got some when he went home this time. I think it smells when it is cooking, so I try to avoid making it for him. I will do it occasionally, but I long for something to make me not smell it cooking...LOL..
Bread? I can do that..:) He says that when he was growing up, his family would take their camper and go all over Europe camping in different countries. His favorite is in the Parisian areas because of the French Baguettes that you can get in the rural country baking shops. He tells me that he doesn't ever think that I will get my baguettes to come out that wonderful, but I do really good with them, and they taste better with each attempt. I am on a hunt for the perfect sandwich bread and I think that if I hang out in these forums I might find it!
I do have the BBA and the BB, along with all of the KAF bread books, too. I also have Berenbaum's Pie and Pastry Bible, one of those digital scales, dry and wet measuring cups/spoons, a ton of Pampered Chef baking stones, etc.
I went to KAF and looked up that Clouche thing someone mentioned. I did not even realize that I had a Pampered Chef version of that thing. Pampered Chef sold it as a Covered Chicken Baker many moons ago, and I have it and use it quite a lot to cook long slow meat dishes. It is seasoned perfectly, so I should be able to bake bread in it quite nicely.
I bake a lot of pies, cheesecakes, cakes, and bread. I really love to do that. I will typically make a recipe that I want to try once exactly like it says, and then I will adapt it to fit what I want and change it a bit from the original recipe. Problem with that is, I never measure any of the changes that I make because I cook like my grandmother did by putting spices and other ingredients in by smell or taste. Like Rachael Ray says to eyeball it...that is what I do. This method drives my family insane because I really cannot tell them exact measurements of the dishes that I create. I don't even know if I would know how to adapt this way of cooking to the measuring and exact science that a lot of cooks do.
Anyway, my signature file comes from another group that I am on where people make these signatures for people on request, and I have quite a few animated ones that I use throughout the year. IMHO, they add pop to my emails..:)
Thanks for your help!
Linda
BBA is "Bread Baker's Apprentice". A book by Peter Reinhart. Also mentioned is "The Bread Bible" by Rose Levy Beranbaum, often referred to as RLB around here. That is a good book worth getting for a home cook. The recipes are well researched and use a professional approach to breads for home kitchens. I haven't read BBA, a lot of people swear by it, but I believe it is more geared to professional. I guess I should get it as I am a professional chef/baker.
Linda ... here is a very easy way to start making great artisan white bread that gets to a size for sandwiches:
Make a biga starter ... 50%-50% water/flour (or 100% hydration in bakers percentages) with a sprinkle of yeast. Make the starter about 1/3 of the final loaf weight. So ... try 6 oz and 6 oz with an 1/8th t yeast. Let it work until it is very foamy ... about 8-10 hours at 75 degrees or a long overnight in winter house temps.
Then, mix flour and water into the biga to get a final mix of 22.5 oz flour and 13.5 oz water (so to the biga you need to add 7.5 oz water (13.5 - 6 already in the biga) and 16.5 oz flour (22.5 - 6 already in the biga). Add a t of salt for every pound of dough (so add 2 here). Then knead in your KA for about 8 minutes. Let rise until doubled. Punch down and form into a round, dust with flour lightly, put into couche and let rise again. Turn it out and slash ... be creative ... and pop it in the oven. Bake on a hot stone for 50 minutes, or more depending on the color of crust you like, at 385 or so with the usual steam for the first 10 minutes
This makes a great tasting artisan loaf but with the low hydration it is rather dense (good for taking sandwich abuse). You can alter the flours to some reasonable degree to get different tastes but make the biga white and only replace about 6 oz of the rest. This recipe takes lick'n and keeps on "tick'n" .
Paul
Paul Kobulnicky
Baking in Ohio
here are some suggestions...
> grains - store them in separate containers rather than mixing them together; you then have the freedom to vary what you include and vary the proportions
> baking pan (loaf pan) - do *not* preheat the stoneware loaf pan before you put the dough in for the final rise - you risk killing off some of the yeast. Be patient; bread dough with a significant % of non-wheat ingredients (oats, brown rice, etc.) will take longer to rise. I would recommend using your metal loaf pans rather than the stoneware ones as they will heat more rapidly in your oven
> yeast - if you are using instant dry yeast do not dissolve in water first (just add it to the dry ingredients); only active dry yeast needs to be dissolved in water
> steel cut oats - the Struan recipe in BBA calls for rolled oats, not steel cut. If you want to use steel-cut, at least soak them overnight (or cook them). If you put them raw in bread dough they will not absorb enough water and you'll have hard little nuggets of oats in your bread