White Bread Comparison of Recipes

The time has come to compare the September white breads. I got all the breads out of the freezer and allowed them to come to room temperature. Then I tasted each one.

I decided that my comparison would be on crust, taste and texture.

1. White Mountain Bread: The Bread Bible

• Crust: Soft and easy to bite
• Taste: Slightly salty taste
• Texture: Funny - tore not in half but in a curve. The crumb was nice and had some openness to it.
  

2. Basic White Bread II: The Book of Bread

• Crust: Has character but is easy to bite through. It is a little chewy compared to the first one.
• Taste: Nice full taste, a little sweet and really smells of the honey that is in it.
• Texture: The slice feels moist and substantial. However, this one had huge air holes between the bread and the crust - probably because I let the loaves rise too long.

3. Sands Basic White Bread: The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook

• Crust: A little tough and chewy. The crust has a lot of body and complements the bread taste
• Taste: A sour-ish flavor with a bit of salt. Tastes like it would make great sandwiches
• Texture; Moist, even crumb

4. White Bread: Variation I: The Bread Baker's Apprentice

• Crust: Most substantial so far but not as tasty as the King Arthur crust
• Taste: Somewhat ordinary taste but wouldn't compete with anything that was on it. Slightly sweet - uses sugar rather than honey
• Texture: Prettiest crumb of all the recipes - tiny holes, nice feel, crust and bread married very well
  

5. Basic White Bread: Sunset Cookbook of Breads

• Crust: Tough, kind of crackles as you chew through it, not very tasty--has a burnt toast feel and flavor to it.
• Taste: Almost no taste - more like store-bought sandwich bread
• Texture: Almost as pretty as the Reinhart bread. Tiny air holes and a feeling of good holding together in the slice.

So now I have to decide my favorite. The Jones' recipe for Basic White Bread II was my very favorite.

I think I like sweeter white breads and this one smelled of the honey in it. This recipe called for 4 T of honey - 1 T more than the other recipes. It was the most moist of the breads and felt good in my mouth.

I also really liked the feel of the crust. I didn't feel disappointed because of the air hole in the crust - I am quite sure that was not the recipe but was rather due to baker error - my leaving the loaf out rising for too long while I hiked a trail!

For sandwiches, I liked the Reinhart (Bread Baker's Apprentice) bread the best. The tiny air holes in the crumb and the feel of the bread were very good. It called for 3 1/4 T of sugar. I think if I had used honey rather than sugar, this one would have been my favorite overall. I also liked the ease of using instant yeast in this bread which none of the other recipes did.

I am very disappointed in the Sunset bread - it really brought nothing new to the table. The King Arthur bread was good, but the crust is what made me put it aside. I liked the taste of it but didn't like the feel of the crust.

Except for the Sunset recipe, I would make all of these recipes again, but I'll give 4 stars to the Book of Bread for their great white bread recipe.

So tomorrow begins the first weekend in October. This month I am baking oatmeal breads. Oatmeal seems like a great way to go into the cool fall.

Although Reinhart doesn't offer an oatmeal bread, I have found five recipes that I will use for my October comparison.

The Last White Bread for September

I decided to make the last white bread in the series from one of my very first bread baking cookbooks: the 1973 edition of the Sunset Cook Book of Breads. I still use this cookbook a lot, as evidenced by the worn picture of it below. This weekend I baked the white bread recipe from it as well as two loaves of sourdough by the recipe in this cookbook.



Sunset was always good about pictures and this recipe is no exception. You can see in the scans below how well they demonstrate by use of pictures.




The finished bread had a rather chewy, tough crust compared to the other breads, but tastes great. The crumb is nice - helped by the milk in the dough.



In the next couple of days I'll compare the five loaves of white bread I baked this month and pick a favorite.

Bread Baker's Apprentice White Bread - Variation 1

As my search for the best plain white bread continues, this week I baked The Bread Baker's Apprentice white bread, variation 1, since it was closest to the other recipes I've used. It is a delicious bread and was relatively quick to put together.

First you put the dry ingredients into the mixer's bowl: flour, salt, powdered milk, sugar and instant yeast. Then you Mix the egg, butter and water together and pour them into the dry ingredients. The mixture comes together quickly - unlike recipes where you first soften the yeast in warm water.



Within a short time, the dough looked like this. I switched to my dough hook and kneaded it in the machine for 6 minutes. Then I kneaded it on the counter for a few minutes more. I did have to add a little flour to create a dough that wasn't too sticky to handle.



The recipe indicates that the dough should rise for 1 1/2 - 2 hours. It's warm in Atlanta and warm in my house, so the dough had doubled in an hour. I then shaped it into loaves and it rose for another hour.

He says to slash the tops of the loaves and fill the slash with olive oil, which I did.

I preheated the oven to 350 and as I headed to the oven with the two risen loaves, would you believe that I dropped one of the pans? It landed on its side and the rise sank. I put the first loaf into the oven. I set the second loaf back on the counter to rise back to its former glory. That happened in about 30 minutes, at which point I put it into the oven as well.



Here's what the loaves looked like straight out of the oven. Below you can see the crumb in a beautiful slice of this bread.



This recipe has no honey in it so it lacks some of the sweet flavor of the previous three loaves. However as a sandwich bread, it will be the perfect vehicle for any type of filling. Also it made great "Toad in the hole" for me for breakfast this morning!

The Comparisons of White Bread Are Ready and Waiting

Here they sit in my chest freezer, waiting for the big thaw at the end of September when I decide what is my favorite white bread recipe. Since I like all the recipes, I think I'll keep a notebook with two sections:

1. The winners in each categories
2. The also-rans that I like enough to make again

Another September White Bread - Part I

Today I tried a recipe from King Arthur Flour. I use their flour all the time, and I have a their 200th anniversary cookbook , so I was sure they'd have a good white bread.

The recipe I used was Walter Sands Famous White Bread which is both in their cookbook and on their webpage. The bread calls for powdered milk rather than liquid milk and is thus different from the previous three breads.

When the yeast was bubbly, I added the powdered milk. I followed the directions, using my Kitchen Aid, rather than doing it by hand. I always knead with the dough hook and then pour the dough onto the counter and knead a few minutes by hand as well. I did this with this white bread.



It rose quicker than the recipe said it would and looked energetic and delicious.



Here it is poured onto the counter before I made it into two loaves which I baked in


4 1/2 X 8 1/2 inch pans.


The process continues in the next part.

Basic White Bread II - Part Two

Having turned the bread dough out of the container, I cut it in half with the bench knife and patted out a rectangular shape of sorts! Then I rolled it into a loaf. Of course, you repeat this with the second half.



I put these rolled loaves into 8 1/2 inch pans to rise. I made the mistake of getting distracted and forgetting the bread, so it rose a little higher than it should have before putting it into the oven (350 degrees for 40 minutes).

The finished loaf is pretty but the far end of the loaf is an obvious air bubble below the surface - probably the result of my leaving it rising for too long. It smells great because of the honey in the bread.



This bread cut open shows the air bubble. The authors say that this version of their white bread will be both somewhat sweet because of the honey and not as compact as either a bread recipe without the sweetener or one that starts with a sponge. It does taste sweeter than the first white bread I made but I don't like the "crumb" as well.

For a listen into what the "crumb" of the bread means, watch this video of Peter Reinhart on Ted.com.



So far I like the Hensperger bread better - the crumb was better and the taste, while not sweet, felt more wholesome to me.

Basic White Bread II - the Second White Bread Part One

I've owned Judith and Evan Jones' book: The Book of Bread since 1986. At the beginning the dedication is to James Beard. It actually says: "For James A. Beard, an inspiration."

I believe it may be out of print since I could only find it from private sellers on Amazon and it was listed on a couple of other used book sites, but nowhere as available new - except from used book sellers who listed it as "new" which I read as "as good as new." So I'm going to give you the recipe:

1 T active dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water
2 1/2 cups milk
4 T butter
4 T honey
1 T coarse salt
6 1/2 - 7 1/2 cups unbleached white flour

If you ever find this book, don't pass it by! It is a wonderful addition to a bread baker's library because the variety of recipes in it are so interesting.

Of course I used my own honey from my bees in this recipe.

First you soften the yeast in 1/4 cup warm water in a large bowl. Then you warm the milk and add the butter, the honey and the salt. When the milk is at 110 degrees F, you can add it to the yeast mix in the large bowl.



Mix in the milk mixture and then add the flour, 1/2 cup at a time. After 6 cups, this is what my mixture looked like so I obviously needed to add more flour. I did so, 1/2 cup at a time and switched to the dough hook to do this.



As per Beth Hensperger, I put the dough in a straight-sided container to rise. It had more than doubled in about an hour.



I love turning the dough out of the deep container - it looks so full of energy on the counter!



Next post will continue this bread.

Too Late for the BBA Challenge, so What Will I Do?

The bread challenges that are going on on the Internet intrigue me, but I'm too late to the party. I read about the BBA Challenge in the Washington Post. It started back in May and is closed with 200 bakers. They are baking their ways through the Bread Baker's Apprentice, a book that I own and would enjoy baking the recipes, but they are four months into weekly baking, so I can't really do that one. It did make me open the book to see the recipes and get inspired, though!

My grandson for whom I started this blog since he and I were baking every week, has moved away from his interest in bread baking. I continue to bake every week and needed some new perspective to inspire me.

So I've decided to pick a type of bread and bake that type of bread weekly for a month to determine which of the four recipes is the best in my opinion. I have lots of bread cookbooks and will have good choices to do this. I'm going to let The Bread Bible by Beth Hensberger be my guide for the first recipe this time because her recipes are always dependably good. (And I want the first thing I try to be really delicious).

If anyone would like to join me in this endeavor, let me know what you are baking and how it turns out - either post a comment or email me (see contact Linda on the left side).

The bread for September, my first month, will be plain white bread. I started week one with Hensberger's White Mountain Bread. She likes the crumb in this bread which is helped with a combination of water and milk in the recipe.

Note: In this work to find the best white bread I will not be varying the recipe from the cookbooks in which I find them so I won't be giving you the recipe. The previous recipes I've posted on this blog are somewhat different from the place where I found them or they were published already on the Internet. I'll hope instead that you'll want to buy the cookbook I am using and have the treasure for yourself!

As per her instructions, I let this bread rise in a straight sided container. I usually use a pottery bowl, but she says that it is better for the bread to rise up rather than out. So this time I used a large Tupperware straight sided container. When you turn the dough out of a straight sided container, it looks like the picture below!



To form the loaves, I divided the dough with a bench knife and patted each half into a long rectangle. I folded the rectangle into overlapping thirds and then rolled it up from the short end, pinching the ends of the roll with the side of my hand.


When fully risen, she says to slice a 1/4 inch deep slash down the length of the loaf. I did this, but I'm afraid that my slash was too shallow because it didn't really separate during baking. Next time I will be braver.



The loaf baked for 42 minutes and looked beautiful. I am not in my usual kitchen this weekend (I'm in the north Georgia mountains) so I didn't know how it would do without my Thermador oven. But it came out lovely and delicious.

This was a great bread for bacon/lettuce/tomato sandwiches - it toasted beautifully and we made sandwiches with heirloom tomatoes from the Farmer's Market in Rabun County.
As Hensperger noted, the crumb on this bread was very nice.



I believe in order to have an end of the month taste test, I'll need to freeze at least a slice of this bread for comparison.

Features of this recipe for White Mountain Bread: active dry yeast, whole milk, no eggs. I mention these because the next week, the bread I'll try will be from the Bread Baker's Apprentice. Peter Reinhart uses instant milk powder, instant yeast and his recipe has an egg in it.

Note: I also baked a second white bread this weekend from The Book of Bread.