3. Perfect Sandwich Bread

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Bake up the perfect sandwich bread with this simple but versatile recipe built from years of baking experience.

Learn how to customize this recipe to your needs, whether you need a rich loaf, a fluffy loaf, or even dinner rolls!

Perfect Sandwich Bread Recipe

Ingredients

• 1-1/2 cup Bread flour, plus additional flour for workable dough
• 1/8 cup sugar
• 2-1/2 tsp instant yeast (1 packet)
• 1 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup water
• 3/4 cup milk
• 3 Tbsp butter
• 1 Tbsp honey
• 1 egg

Directions

1. Add dry ingredients, starting with 1-1/2 cup bread flour, sugar, yeast, and salt to a bowl and whisk to combine
2. Combine water and milk, then microwave until it reaches 130°.
3. Add butter and honey to the wet ingredients and stir until the butter and honey melt in. The butter and honey cool the milk mixture down.
4. Add the milk mixture into the dry ingredients and stir to combine. It’s okay if there are lumps at this point.
5. Stir in the egg. Add the entire egg for a richer, yolkier bread. For a less rich bread, add egg white only. For fluffier bread, add 2 egg whites.
6. Continue to add bread flour until the mixture is no longer sticky and can be handled, but not too much to where it’s hard to knead.
7. Knead until the dough forms a clean ball and place in oiled bowl and cover. Place in a warm area to rise for 1 hour. While the dough rises, prepare a greased bread pan lined with parchment paper.
8. The dough should have doubled in size — Punch down the dough and either separate into 2 pieces for 2 smaller loaves or leave whole for a larger loaf.
9. Place dough on a well-floured surface and roll into a rectangle with a depth of the length of the loaf pan. The width should be about 12-16 inches, or roll until the dough is 1/2 inch thick.
10. Roll into a loaf, starting with the shorter side, so that the depth of the loaf matches the length of the bread pan. Pinch the ends together with the seam on the bottom of the loaf. Pinch the seam on the bottom together as well. Place the loaf into the bread pan, seam side down, and let rise (covered) for 1 hour or until the loaf has doubled in size.
11. Bake at 350° for 25-30 minutes depending on oven and size of pan. Top should be golden.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Alyssa Warner: This sandwich bread recipe is from our very own Megan Olmsted from her time in a bakery. This classic sandwich bread recipe can be made either as a loaf pan or a pan of rolls, and the recipe can be customized to your needs, taste, and usage. Let’s go see how Megan developed her recipe.

[00:00:18] Megan Olmsted: I’ve tried more sandwich bread recipes than I can count.

[00:00:21] Most had some things I loved, and some techniques didn’t work so well, but none of them gave me a truly all-purpose bread. After experimenting with so many recipes, I instinctively began combining all of the techniques that I liked to create the perfect loaf. Baking really is a science, and each ingredient can be adjust- adjusted to achieve the exact bread you’re aiming for.

[00:00:43] Sometimes you want a thick, fluffy slice of bread straight from the oven with flavored butter or homemade jam or nothing if you just like plain bread right from the oven. I personally prefer a sweeter, richer bread with more of an egg flavor for French toast. Sometimes [00:01:00] you don’t really wanna taste the bread that much for sandwiches.

[00:01:02] You just want something sturdy that’s not gonna fall apart in a sandwich so you can taste the sandwich fillings. Learning how the ingredients interact can help you achieve the perfect loaf of sandwich bread. This sandwich bread recipe is a good base one. It’s a really simple bread recipe if you’re just starting out.

[00:01:16] It can meet all of your sandwich bread needs, whether it’s supporting your favorite toppings or being enjoyed for its own flavor. This recipe can be made with a stand mixer, or you can hand-knead it. So we’re gonna start out with our dry ingredients, and you’ll start out with a cup and a half of bread flour.

[00:01:30] Now, we are doubling this recipe, so I have three cups of bled- bread flour here. And if you wanted to use all-purpose flour if that’s all you have, you can use that. The bread flour does have extra proteins in it, which give the bread that chewier flavor. It’ll take a little bit of sugar. You can cut down the amount of sugar, so it’ll take h- 1/8 cup of sugar.

[00:01:50] We’ll also add a teaspoon of salt. And then if you’re using active dry yeast, you can add that to your wet ingredients. And if you’re using instant yeast, you can [00:02:00] add that right into your dry ingredients. Okay, so in the stand mixer you, if you’re using a stand mixer, or in a bowl, you can go ahead and add all of your dry ingredients together.

[00:02:09] So we’ll start with a cup and a half of bread flour. Again, we’re doubling this recipe here. And you will add to that your 1/4 cup of sugar.

[00:02:25] One teaspoon of salt

[00:02:31] Even the amount of salt can be changed. It does slow down the rising time a little bit, which can be a good thing if you’re going for that. It just helps bring out the flavors of the bread a little bit since salt is a flavor enhancer

[00:02:48] And then we will do two and a half teaspoons of yeast. And here I’m doing five for the double recipe[00:03:00]

[00:03:03] And I really like to whisk my dry ingredients to get them fully incorporated. It really fluffs them up instead of packing them down

[00:03:24] And because I’m using a stand mixer today, I’m gonna go ahead and add my dry ingredients right into the stand mixer

[00:03:37] Okay, so with my dry ingredients in the KitchenAid, I’m moving on to my wet ingredients. In here I have six tablespoons of butter for the double recipe, and then right here I have my milk and water mixture. Three-quarters cup milk and three-quarters cup water is in this bowl right here. And this, you don’t want it too hot ’cause it’ll kill the yeast, so right now about [00:04:00] 115 to 120 is fine if you have the yeast in the dry ingredients.

[00:04:03] If you are using active dry yeast and you are adding the yeast directly into the wet ingredients, you’ll want it a little bit cooler than that. And if it’s a little bit too warm, don’t worry, because we are adding it to this butter, and it’s gonna melt the butter, and that’ll help cool down the milk mixture a little bit

[00:04:29] And to my wet ingredients, I will also add one tablespoon of honey

[00:04:54] And give this a good stir to help melt the butter[00:05:00]

[00:05:12] If you are using only honey in your recipe, that’s totally fine. You can cut down on the amount of sugar and add more honey. You could do no honey and more sugar. It’s pretty customizable to what type of sweetener you would like. So if you’re using more honey, you would add that with this with the wet ingredients right now.

[00:05:29] Now that the milk mixture has helped melt the butter and the honey is mixed in there as well, we can go ahead and add this to the dry ingredients in the stand mixer

[00:05:47] And you’ll want to slowly add little amounts at a time so it doesn’t clump up[00:06:00]

[00:06:23] At this stage, you might wanna pause the mixer and help it along a little bit with a spatula by scraping down the sides

[00:06:41] And lastly, we’re gonna add the eggs after the milk mixture has been added[00:07:00]

[00:07:01] I find that I have much better luck getting the eggs to mix in if I whisk them just a little bit before I add them

[00:07:15] And again, we’ll just run this on a low speed to get it all mixed together, and you might need to pause and use a spatula every once in a while

[00:07:55] We have everything to a pretty uniform mixture, not too many big clumps. We can go [00:08:00] ahead and start adding in bread flour to actually form it into a dough

[00:08:07] And you’ll just wanna run the mixture on the lowest speed while you slowly add in bread flour

[00:08:55] So right now we can see that it’s starting to form more of a dough, and it’s looking less like a batter, and it’s [00:09:00] starting to pull away from the sides as the flour gets incorporated

[00:09:45] If you’re looking to really experiment with bread, this is a great recipe to start with because there’s no exact hydration amount. So I personally prefer a lower hydration bread for sandwich bread. I don’t like as sticky of a dough. But test it out and [00:10:00] see. Right now it’s a little, it’s a little on the sticky side.

[00:10:02] But test it out. There’s no harm in baking this and seeing what it turns out like to see what you like. If you’re gonna let the stand mixer do the mixing, and that’s totally fine, it’s so easy to make bread if you just can throw all the ingredients in and walk away for a little bit, for a couple minutes, you can totally do that.

[00:10:20] So I’m gonna go ahead and show what it looks like to let the stand mixer knead it a little bit, and then I’ll also show you what it looks like to hand-knead it. One thing you do have to be careful about with stand mixers is you can walk away for a couple minutes, but it is easy to overmix with the stand mixer.

[00:10:59] If you’re gonna [00:11:00] be kneading by hand, I would suggest adding a little bit less flour into the bread mixture when you’re mixing it, because you can lightly dust the surface with flour. Don’t add too much because then that will change your bread recipe. You don’t want to add more flour into the bread during this part.

[00:11:17] You just wanna make it so that it doesn’t stick to the counter

[00:11:39] So there are lots of different techniques for kneading dough, but it basically comes down to folding and pushing it all together so that it just forms a smoother ball of dough. Right now it’s still looking a little rough. I did let it knead in the g- in the mixer a little bit just to show that. But basically you’re going to push with this part of your hand [00:12:00] and fold it over and turn.

[00:12:03] And you s- start to form your own technique for what you like

[00:12:22] One way to tell if your dough is done kneading is this test right here. If it starts to rip, it’s going to need a little bit more kneading. This one is close, but it is starting to rip a little bit

[00:12:40] Okay, so our dough is looking smooth, and when you stretch it, you can see that it’s transparent without ripping. So it is done kneading, and it’s ready to proof. So to let it rise, you will just need a greased bowl so it doesn’t stick to the sides, and just put it in there, [00:13:00] and you’ll wanna cover it up so it doesn’t get dried out, and let it sit for about an hour or until it’s doubled in size.

[00:13:06] Okay, so our dough has more than doubled in size here, so it is ready to turn into loaves. So we’ll need to punch it down a little bit so that we can work with it. And there are a few different ways to form loaves

[00:13:43] If you’re in a hurry, you can really just turn it inside out and just flip all of the edges under to, so you get a smooth top. And pinch them [00:14:00] together on the bottom

[00:14:04] And then you can form it into a loaf shape. And this is the super quick method. It might not be as even of a loaf, but that was a pretty quick way to get a loaf. So I’ll put this in my greased loaf pan

[00:14:26] And I just press it down to even it out

[00:14:33] If you’re not in a hurry and you want something a little bit cleaner You can also roll your dough the same way you would if you were making cinnamon rolls or any other yeast dough that you roll[00:15:00]

[00:15:17] So I have a rectangle here. It really doesn’t have to be perfect ’cause we’re gonna roll it up anyways. And so starting from the shorter end here We’re just gonna roll it tightly. You don’t want really any air bubbles in there

[00:15:36] and then pinch the seam

[00:15:44] And squeeze the ends together and tuck those under. And that gives you a little bit more uniform of a loaf. And again, that can go right in your greased loaf pan[00:16:00]

[00:16:04] And the last thing you can do, since this recipe is so versatile, you can also make dinner rolls with this exact same recipe. When I make dinner rolls, there’s really no technique to what I do. I just like to squeeze off a little bit at a time, about this size about inch and a half or two inches. And same way with forming a loaf, you’re just gonna grab a little bit and push the ends over and squeeze those into the middle until you have a nice clean ball of dough

[00:16:39] pinch it together on the bottom so it’s clean

[00:16:51] As you’re putting these in the pan, you don’t wanna make them too close together, so they probably shouldn’t be touching each other because they’ll need some room to rise, and they’ll also expand [00:17:00] when they bake a little bit. So I’ll probably fit six in here

[00:17:08] So I have the loaf that was formed with my hands, and this is the quicker method. This is the loaf that I rolled out flat and then rolled up. And I have the dinner rolls right here. And same technique as before. We are just going to let these rise somewhere that’s a little bit warm 70 or 75 degrees until they’re doubled in size

[00:17:37] Our loaves have risen, and now we’re gonna bake them at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes[00:18:00]

[00:18:01] Those beautiful loaves

[00:18:16] Delicious So we baked off our delicious bread, and while it was really tempting to cut into it and try it right away right there out of the oven, it’s vital that you not cut into soft breads like these, like sandwich breads, right away. Give them at least an hour of cool time first. Otherwise, you cut in and it just turns into a gummy mess and the chew is all wrong, and you worked so hard to make your bread.

[00:18:45] You might as well wait and get to enjoy it when it’s at its best. So here’s one of our little mini loaves. We baked it in a muffin pan.

[00:18:58] And look at that. [00:19:00] It’s the perfect sandwich bread. There’s no big holes so none of your sandwich goodies will slip out, and it’s got

[00:19:11] a nice soft crust and it rose extremely high. You’ll be able to have such beautiful sandwiches with this