Go-to Sandwich Bread

Here is a link to the cast iron pans I’m using!

I’ve tried many of the different popular sandwich bread recipes specifically for fresh milled flour, and this is what I’ve found out - a lot of them are really good! I would be happy making any of the popular sandwich bread recipes every day for the rest of my life. This is just the recipe that I’ve settled on that works best for me, consistently turns out well, and is easy for me to throw together. I started out always using Sue Becker’s bread recipe, and I know it’s a popular favorite for a lot of people. My go-to recipe is very similar to hers, it’s just been tweaked a little bit to fit my preferences! I like to use all hard white wheat, but you could use hard red wheat as well, or a combination of the two! I am feeding toddlers, so I find that they prefer the milder taste of the hard white wheat (although they do enjoy hard red wheat as well!)

I have the basic percentages of this recipe calculated out too, which I use often if I am wanting to make a specific amount of dough. I often will make an extra loaf or two a week for a friend, or I will want to make some extra dinner rolls for the week. If you are interested in the percentages, scroll to the bottom of the post and I will have them all written out there! That way you can customize the recipe to fit whatever your baking needs are for the week! (And if the thought of knowing the percentages and doing math stresses you out, just skip that part!)

Happy milling, friends! I hope you love this simple sandwich bread recipe like we do!

Go-to sandwich bread

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Yield: 1100 g of dough (2 8.5x4.5 loaves)

Author: Its Freshly Milled

Prep time: 15 MinCook time: 30 MinInactive time: 2 H & 45 MTotal time: 3 H & 30 M

I use this dough for almost everything! Sandwich bread, cinnamon rolls, dinner rolls, hamburger buns. Its easy to throw together, versatile, and delicious! I hope you love it!

Ingredients

Go-to sandwich bread

• 540 g fresh milled hard white wheat
• 363 g cold water
• 1 egg
• 88 g honey
• 66 g olive oil
• 3 tsp yeast
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp sunflower lecithin

Instructions

1. Mill 540g of hard white wheat berries. (Milling 540g of hard white wheat berries will give you 540g of hard white flour).
2. Weigh out 363g of cold water, and combine with the 540g of fresh milled hard white wheat. Mix together until just combined. Let rest for anywhere from 15 minutes-1 hour. This will give gluten development a nice head start so you won't have to knead for as long.
3. Add in the remaining ingredients: 1 egg, 88g of honey, 66g of olive oil, 3 tsp of yeast, 2 tsp salt, and 1 tbsp sunflower lecithin. The sunflower lecithin is optional but will give you a much softer loaf of bread. (see notes for leaving out egg!)
4. Knead for anywhere from 5-30 minutes, until you get window pane. Be very careful here not to overheat your dough while kneading. If you have been kneading for several minutes and your dough is starting to feel warm to the touch, pause your mixer and resume again in a few minutes after your dough has had the chance to cool off a bit. Overheating the dough will make it much more difficult to achieve proper gluten development.
5. Once you've got a good window pane, put your dough in an oiled bowl, cover it, and let it rest for about 1-2 hours until your dough has doubled in size.
6. Once your dough has doubled in size, prepare a clean surface on your counter to shape your dough. I like to dust my counters with flour to prevent the dough from sticking to my counters and sticking to the bread pans. You also want to prepare your pans as well, and grease or flour as appropriate to make sure your dough will come out easily after it is baked.
7. Pour your dough on the counter and split it in half. Each half should be 550g of dough.
8. Shape your dough into oval loaves. There are many different shaping techniques to use, but just do whatever feels right for you. My favorite way to shape is to pull in all of the sides to the center to create a big ball, and then I flip it over so all of the seams are on the bottom. I push the dough back and forth on the counter a few times to create surface tension, and then I carefully place it in my pans.
9. Allow the bread to rise in their pans for about 30-45 minutes. The dough should be just reaching the top of the pans, and there should be a slight indent if you press your index finger into the dough. Towards the end of this second rise, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
10. Bake at 350 degree for 30-40 minutes or until your dough reaches 200 degrees.
11. Once your dough has reached 200 degrees, remove it from the oven, and immediately take out of the pans to cool on a wire rack.
12. Wait until your bread has cooled off to slice in to it or put it in a container. ENJOY!!

Notes

If wanting to omit egg, add an extra 50g of olive oil or oil of choice!

Here are my percentages if you are wanting to make a different amount of dough than what the recipe notes!

.49 fresh flour

.33 cold water

.04 egg (I always either round this up or down to 50g, whatever it is closest to!)

.08 honey

.06 olive oil

and then for every 550g of dough:

1.5 tsp yeast

1 tsp salt

.5 tbsp sunflower lecithin

So for example, if I want to make 4 550g loaves of bread and 6 50g dinner rolls, I would need 2500g dough, so I would multiply each of the above percentages by 2500g to get the following:

1225g fresh flour

825g cold water

2 eggs

200 g honey

150g olive oil

(And then I’d divide 2500 by 550 to get 4.5, so I’d multiply the yeast, salt, and sunflower lecithin by 4.5 to get the following:)

6.75 tsp yeast

4.5 tsp salt

2.25 tbsp sunflower lecithin

I hope that makes sense! It always helps me out to be able to customize my recipe to however much dough I need!