After Years of Bread Baking…

I have finally found the PERFECT sandwich bread.  I have had a sandwich bread that I make, and it’s good, it’s tasty, especially fresh out of the oven, but I always thought it could be better.  There just was something about it that I thought could be improved, but what I did love about it was its simplicity, and after years of making it, I didn’t need the recipe, and I was confident enough to tweak it as desired.

But one day, several months ago, I was perusing A Year In Bread, and I remember seeing many of the breads there, thinking I needed to try them, but then somehow, I never got back over there and never tried them.  Well, Saturday morning, I saw Susan’s Farmhouse White bread, and I thought about how I didn’t have any other plans for the day-other than watching snow melt- and I decided to give it a try.

The method was a little different, but the overall ingredients were very basic.  The most different part of the method was that the salt was saved until halfway through the kneading process, and then was kneaded in instead of being thrown in with the rest of the ingredients.  But as I worked this dough, as I kneaded and shaped, I thought about how delightful the texture was as I worked.  It was like working with velvet dough, it was soft and pliable, it smelled nice, and I just knew I was in the midst of creating something special.

Special indeed.  This is the ultimate loaf of white bread.  This is the bread that we used to buy for two or three dollars freshly baked at the local bakery before it closed. Andy and I literally sat at the kitchen counter eating slices of this bread freshly cut with nothing on it.  Nothing. No butter, no jam, no peanut butter, the bread is that good.   It’s moist, yet dense, and chewy- oh, it’s delightfully chewy, and later on, when we did bring out the condiments, Andy declared victory when the extra chunky peanut butter spread on this bread without so much as tearing a single strand of bread.  It passed the peanut butter test with flying colors!  The fact that one batch makes three loaves makes this perfect for me for an everyday bread.  Since I try to make all our bread homemade, I find that two loaves just isn’t enough for us for a week, and four is too many.  Three is ideal, meaning that if I can pick a bread baking day and stick to it, we will always have fresh bread around.

As I told Andy, the method to this one is different than other bread I’ve baked, but it is easy nonetheless.  Because it was new to me, my nose was constantly in the recipe, but I think that after a few times, this bread will come to me just as easy as any other, and I will be able to do it without a recipe nearby.  If you’ve been looking for the perfect everyday white sandwich bread, this is it, it just doesn’t get any better than this.

No recipe here today- go to A Year In Bread and check out the Farmhouse White.