I’m trying to bake a nice loaf of white sandwich bread. My criteria is a single loaf, use a stand mixer to knead it. I’m currently using a King Arthur recipe, which called for all AP flour. It was fine the first day, but on the following days, it simply disintigrated. It has butter and milk in it. I suspect the milk is making it very tender and fragile.
I like a bread that has more body. For example, the no knead bread. But that doesn’t bake up in a loaf pan very well.
So I want a bread with a nice sturdy crumb, that will bake in a loaf pan, and will not fall apart two days after I bake it.
My sister just shared this bread loaf recipe w me. She uses it as her sandwich loaf. It’s not a white bread loaf but it’s tasty and slices beautifully.
Thanks for the link. I just happen to have all of the ingredients on hand, so it’s in the running for the next loaf. I like that it uses AP flour, because I’m doing my darndest to go throughthe 25 pounds a friend gifted me!
I have baked this recipe (King Arthur Classic Sandwich Bread) every day for the last 20 days. I haven’t had the “staleness” issues you mentioned. I am at my parents’ place every day and use their toaster oven so I don’t have to heat up the whole house. My first three attempts were crumbly and biscuit-y. Then I found 25 lbs of KA flour at Costco (my Costco never carried KA flour before). I kept making at least one loaf everyday – some days like yesterday I make a double batch – and now it looks like this:
I even kneaded it by hand once to show my mom how resting dough can shorten kneading times. It comes out better with instant yeast than active dry. These days I can’t be snobby, I use whatever yeast I can find. My instant ran out yesterday and I found some active dry again, so I’m excited to play with it and see if I can tweak it to get similar results with active dry.
Appreciate hearing your experience. No two bakers ever get the same results my local chef/baking teacher told me since everything that matters differs.
I have read that KA AP flour has a higher protein that other AP flours. On my last atempt with the sandwich bread recipe, I used half AP flour, and half KA Bread flour. Looking at your photo, I’m going to try again, this time using all bread flour. Maybe that will give me the sturdiness I’m looking for.
Thanks for sharing your journey with this recipe, bmore!
This what it looks like when I take it out the mixer. I knead in the mixer for more than 15 minutes. I would recommend finding KA AP instead of using the bread flour. I have made this recipe with Gold Medal Unbleached AP, but I know what the dough is supposed to feel like having made it so many times. If you want to use KA bread flour, I frequently make this recipe and it’s all bread flour. (You will need oats for that recipe. Let the oats soak in the lukewarm milk for 10 minutes while you get out the rest of the ingredients.)
Here are videos of how well the bread keeps. This is with oil instead of butter (the recipe gives you a choice). I don’t use the tangzhong method, either.
Once it had risen almost an inch above the rim, I placed it in a preheated oven for 30 minutes. I bake this bread between between 375F and 400F. It was overbaked slightly with an internal temperature of 201F.