In general I love rustic sourdough bread. But from time to time I do enjoy white bread, especially for toasting. This recipe is yeast based and is really easy to do even if you have no clue about baking bread. A really good beginner recipe.

Ingredients

• 500g white all purpose flour
• 150g milk
• 150g water
• 10g salt
• 50g butter
• 30g sugar
• 20g fresh yeast (half a yeast cube)

Instructions

Mix the flour and the sugar in a bowl. Mix the milk with hot water in another vessel. Mix the milk and water and bring it up to body temperature (you can just mix the milk with hot water).

In a third vessel combine 50g taken from the flour mix and 100g from the milk mix as well as your yeast. This will activate the yeast. Let it rest in a warm environment for about 30 minutes. Note that this mixture will easily triple in size.

In the meantime you can melt the butter so you don’t have to do it later on Afterward, mix all ingredients together. Let the dough rest for about 1 to 2 hours. It should roughly double in size.

Punch down the risen dough in your bowl and put it on a slightly floured surface. Flatten the dough out a bit into a square shape, role it together and put it in a greased bread baking form.

Note: I did not have a good baking form for this amount of dough, so I cut a part of during shaping and formed a separate loaf. Also I did not form the loaf very well so it did not fit the form. This does not matter that much in the end.

Let it rest for another hour or two (again until it doubled in size). Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Put the baking tray on a lower level in the oven (not the middle one), otherwise the top will get too dark. In case you notice that the top is already golden brown after 15 minutes, cover it with a sheet of baking paper for the rest of the time.

Next Time

Let the loaf rest inside the baking form a bit longer to get the typical sandwich bread form.

This should also be very doable with sourdough, though with a very fast grown levain.