In our home, we are big fans of fresh, homemade white bread, so I needed to find a reliable and not too labor intensive white bread recipe. Though often the route to fresh baked white bread in our house is a frozen white bread dough variety, from time to time I get ambitious and treat the family with bread from a homemade scratch white bread recipe. Thus began my search for the ideal white bread recipe.
I had been using a basic white bread recipe for quite some time that hails from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book (Meredith Corporation, Des Moines, Iowa, 1989). As white bread recipes go, the recipe was not too difficult to prepare, but was not always as soft as I like my white bread to be. I set off on a search of the internet for other white bread recipe options, and tried recipes from sites like about.com and allrecipes.com, among others.
In the end, I located several homemade white bread recipes. As white bread is a very basic bread, the recipes were all very similar. I settled on two reliable recipes, chosen for their flavor, texture, ingredient cost and ease, instruction clarity and ease of preparation.
The Recipes
Ironically, after all my searching, one of the two favored recipes turned out to be the Better Homes and Gardens white bread recipe I had been using all along.
Better Homes and Gardens White Bread Recipe
Ingredients:
5 ¾ to 6 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 package dry active yeast
2 ¼ cups milk
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon shortening, butter, or margarine
1 teaspoon salt
Directions:
Combine 2 ½ cups flour and the yeast in a large mixing bowl. Heat and stir milk, sugar, shortening, and salt until warm (120 to 130 degrees); butter will almost melt. Add to flour mixture and beat with electric mixer on low for thirty seconds (scrape bowl constantly). Beat on high three minutes more. Stir in as much of the remaining flour as you can with a spoon.
Turn dough onto lightly floured board and knead in remaining dough until smooth and elastic dough is formed (six to eight minutes). Shape into a ball and place in a greased bowl. Turn once to grease dough surface. Cover and rise in warm place until double (approximately forty-five minutes).
Punch down dough and turn again onto floured surface. Divide into two even balls. Cover and let rest for ten minutes. Shape each dough half into bread loaves by patting or rolling.
Place dough loaves into greased bread pans (8x4x2). Cover and rise in warm place until double (about thirty to forty minutes). Bake in 375 degree oven 40 minutes or until done. Loaves can be covered with aluminum foil the last ten minutes of baking to prevent over browning if necessary.
Remove immediately from pans and cool on wire racks.
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The second favored white bread recipe is found on allrecipes.com. It is a recipe for Amish White Bread.
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Amish White Bread
Ingredients:
2 cups warm water (110 degrees)
2/3 cups sugar
1 ½ tablespoons active dry yeast
1 ½ teaspoons salt
¼ cup vegetable oil
6 cups bread flour
Directions:
Dissolve sugar in warm water in a large bowl and stir in yeast. Proof until yeast is foamy.
Mix salt and oil into yeast. Mix in flour one cup at a time. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface and knead until smooth. Put dough in well oiled bowl and turn to coat dough. Cover with a damp cloth. Let rise until doubled, approximately one hour.
Turn dough onto floured surface, punch down and knead for a few minutes. Divide dough in half. Shape dough halves into loaves. Place into two well oiled 9×5 inch loaf pans.
Bake at 350 degrees for half an hour.
Recipe Review
As I said, these recipes were chosen as the most reliable white bread recipes because of their flavor, texture, and ease of use.
Originally, I had some difficulty with attaining the desired texture with the Better Homes and Gardens white bread recipe. After trying out several other white bread recipe versions, I found them all to be very similar. One or two might have had a slight texture and softness edge over the Better Homes and Gardens recipe, but they also involved extensive, overly complicated instructions for mixing, kneading, rolling and shaping.
In the end, I returned to the standby Better Homes and Gardens recipe, which is still a very good white bread recipe. By paying attention to kneading and dough texture, as well as rising times, I have been able to make a softer loaf and solve any texture quandaries.
The most important detail is to be sure to rise the bread in a warm place, not at all chilly or cold, or the dough will not rise adequately. The resulting white bread will be quite palatable, but somewhat stiff, less soft and chewy. I have also found that allowing for some extra time for the dough to rise has helped a lot, too. On the other hand, for some uses, like heavy sandwich-making, a stiffer bread is desirable.
Allrecipe.com’s Amish White Bread recipe is quite good as it is, and results in a very soft and chewy, delicious loaf of white bread. Since this recipe calls for water instead of milk, it is also a bit more economical to make. Amish white bread is a sweeter white bread recipe, with a slightly sugary flavor. This is a very good white bread recipe which requires no tinkering, but as it is a somewhat sweet bread, it may not be your favorite choice for certain sandwiches and meal pairings.
All in all, either recipe makes a very good loaf of homemade white bread. The difference is really in your palate’s preference, a personal choice of flavor. There is an abundance of basic white bread recipes, but after trying out many, these are to of the most flavorful and easiest to prepare as homemade bread making goes.
Want to know what other great recipes are worth a try? Read more at Mary Ward’s page on AC.
