Hello, I bake a typical artisan sourdough loaf with nice holes etc.
But I wanted to make a more straightforward sandwich loaf.
I'm thinking there are general rules. eg...
Lower hydration (something like 60-65%)
The liberal use of milk and sugar (possibly replacing water with same amount of semi skimmed milk?)
A vigorous kneading with no stretching after.
Preshape after aliquot jar has almost doubled.
I have a question here. I would usually put my loaf in the fridge overnight at this point but I don't know if I need to do that for a sandwich loaf. My question is, do I compress what's in the aliquot jar as well, wait for that to double again and then bake? What are the signs that a loaf is ready to bake immediately after second rise? Should the loaf have doubled? Should it be the size in the pan that you would want it to come out of the oven? Or should I put it in smalller and hope it kicks on in the oven?
Any help gratefully received on all the above.
Thank you for reading
Sandwich loaves cover a wide range but you don't need to know about most of those details. By using a loaf pan, you can make up for a wide range of hydration and other variables and still make it all work out. Hydrations tend to be higher, not lower, than hearth loaves. Even if you end up with a wet, gooey paste you can still scrape it into a pan and get a fine loaf.
You don't need to put either a sandwich loaf or a hearth bread into the refrigerator overnight, but doing so 1) can make your schedule easier, and 2) you usually get a better flavor, at the risk of a more sour one.
Many TFLers like to make their sandwich breads softer, moister, and longer-lasting by pre-cooking part of the flour, either by mixing it with boiling water or cooking in a pan like a roux at a lower-than-boiling temperature. You can get a similar effect by adding mashed potato or potato flakes.
If you end up with a wet paste, you can just scrape the dough into the pan, cover, and let it rise. Then bake it. If you end up with a dough that you can shape, you can either do a bulk ferment, then shape and proof, or just out the log into the pan, proof, and bake as usual.
Generally you want the risen loaf to be below yet near the top of the pan. The trick here is to use the right amount of dough so that it reaches that height when it's done fermenting. For a 4 X 4 X 9 inch Pullman (lidded) pan, I usually find that 450g of flour makes a dough of the right size. You can find charts that tell you how much dough to use for all the standard pan sizes but they tell you in terms of the weight of the dough while I like to base it on the weight of the flour, since that's easy to control when designing the bread and when measuring.
You still need those skills you learned while baking hearth breads to gauge when the dough has reached a particular stage, but everything is less fussy.
tomP
Treat as normal - only thing different is the shape. Enjoy!
There are many excellent recipes on TFL that describe the technique. This is one of them.
This was a stupidly large sourdough sandwich loaf I made a couple years ago. For the pan I used a foil 1/3 steam table tray. I retarded this for 12 hours and baked it straight out of the 'fridge in a giant Dutch oven with steam. Most bakers would have no use for this type of baking but it does illustrate some techniques which may be of use to OP. Best wishes. Dave