Today I’ll be sharing a trustworthy recipe for white bread. This is it when you’re craving for a homemade toast or a chunky picnik sandwich. I’ve even prepared fine finger sandwiches with this bread for afternoon tea. The secret to fluffy delicious homemade sandwich bread is egg yolks and butter! The following recipe* is by Swedish baker Jan Hedh. I’ve scaled it down to half from the original as my current stand mixer can handle only so much. Baking 2 loaves at the same time is a great plus, too.
Homemade Sandwich Bread
- Measure wheat flour, honey and egg yolks into a large bowl. Dissolve yeast in warm milk and pour the liquid over the rest.
- Knead the mixture for 5 minutes (slowest speed when using a standing mixer, double the time if kneading by hand). Add butter (room temperature) in small portions and continue kneading for 10 more minutes. Add sea salt and keep on kneading until the dough is smooth and elastic. Grease two bread pans ready.
- On a slightly floured working surface, divide the dough into 10 equal portions. Shape and roll each ball into a long ribbon (compare to the lenght of your bread pans). Place the ribbons into the bread pans.
- Let the bread rest and rise for 60 minutes doubling their size. It’s important that the surface wouldn’t dry so you can drizzle some water couple of times on top of the bread. (When the bread are in a closed cold oven or in a box, steam of a boiling water works well too).
- Pre-heat the oven to 230°C. Brush the bread with egg wash with a pinch of salt. Bake the bread for 35 minutes in total but after the first 5 minutes adjust the temperature to 190°C.
- Carefully remove the bread out of the pans and keep baking the bread until they are golden and crusty on each side. Let the loaves rest on a cooling rack for one hour.
What can I say – it is the tastiest homemade sandwich bread ever and buttery as hell. Worth every bite but only an occasional bread choice in our household. The recipe makes approximately 1 kg of dough and I’ve used both 2 litre and 1,5 litre bread pans for baking. We eat one loaf and freeze the other for special occasions. Keeping the loaf in bread bag, three days later this bread tastes as fresh as it was the day you baked it. Hope you enjoy it too!
*This recipe is based on and translated from Jan Hedh’s book Bröd (2005) but the instructions are re-written by yours truly. Hedh is a Swedish baker with decades of experience and celebrated in his field internationally. I recommend to check his recipes whenever you come across them. I would love to check Swedish Breads and Pastries (2010) next.