Here’s a great-tasting chewy white sandwich bread which incorporates a blend of whole grains to give your sandwich bread extra nutritional value, flavor and texture.
This recipe uses King Arthur’s excellent Harvest Grains Blend which contains a little of everything: oats, wheat flakes, rye flakes, sunflower kernels, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, flax and millet.
Of course, you can experiment with the grains you like best – even just using old fashioned rolled oats will add a nice texture to what would otherwise be fairly ordinary white bread.
The final bread texture incorporates the whole grains a lot better if you’ve soaked them for about 10 minutes before you add the flour. If you don’t soak the grains first they seem to ‘rob’ the dough of water during the rise, then sink and cause large holes in the dough.
So, start by taking 16oz warm filtered water (by weight), dissolve 1tbsp white sugar into it and sprinkle on 1tbsp instant yeast. Add 3oz harvest grains blend and leave the grains to soak for 10 minutes.
While the grains are soaking, weigh out 24oz unbleached all-purpose flour, 1oz non-fat dry milk and whisk in 1tbsp table salt.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet, mixing thoroughly with a spoon. The dough will be somewhat stiff and slightly tacky – turn out onto a clean, lightly floured counter and knead well for about 7-8 minutes, adding just enough extra flour as necessary to prevent sticking. Place into a lightly oiled bowl and let the dough rise for about 60-90 minutes – until it’s doubled in volume.
Gently deflate the dough and divide into two equal pieces. Shape into loaves and place in prepared 1lb loaf pans. The loaves need to rise again, but take care not to let them over-proof – the extra weight of the grains in the rising dough can collapse the loaf a lot more easily than an equivalent recipe without them.
When the bread is just cresting over the top of the pan, preheat the oven to 400°F and place an empty metal tray on the bottom rack. When the oven reaches temperature, carefully place the loaves on the middle rack and throw 5 or 6 ice cubes onto the metal tray. They’ll immediately begin to sizzle and create steam – this creates a beautiful crust on the loaves.
After 10 minutes, reduce the temperature to 350°F, then bake for an additional 20 minutes.
When you turn the loaves out of the pan, knock the bottom of the loaf with your knuckles. You’ll hear a hollow thud when the loaf is fully cooked. Alternatively, check the temperature with an instant read thermometer
Cool the loaves on a rack completely before slicing.
