Golden Sandwich Bread

As mentioned in this recipe, this bread is indeed a good bread for toast, sandwiches, and French toast. It is even delicious on its own and un-toasted. As said, this bread is indeed golden in colour and its smell alone can makes us salivate when it was baking in the oven. It is brioche-tasting and yet soft, spongy and less guilty to indulge.

This bread recipe is from the book, Bread by Nick Malgieri. I must thank my two baking buddies, Joyce from Kitchen Flavours and Lena, from Frozen wings for suggesting this recipe to me because my family and I really enjoy eating it. Lucky that I can predict that this is going to be a good recipe and baked two loaves according to the exact quantity mentioned in the recipe. We ate one loaf when it was freshly baked and froze the other one for later use. The frozen ones were eventually thawed and consumed as toast. They were very light and crispy when toasted. Yum!

Before proceeding onto the recipe, here are a few tips to share about baking this bread:
This recipe yields a sticky dough and so it is best to mix and knead using an electric mixer or a bread-maker.

• Try to resist using too much flour while shaping the dough into loaf as the increase of flour content might toughen the texture of the finishing breads.
• Use a 21 cm x 11 cm baking tin to bake your loaf. I baked one of mine in a slightly smaller tin and it looks like a balloon baking in such a small tin.
• This recipe uses three fermentation steps but I did mine in just two and it still works... 

Cottony soft golden sandwich bread

Making my bread using bread-maker

The breads rose very nicely after their final proving and baking.

Mum, are we baking a balloon? - To avoid this comment, use the right baking tin. LOL!

Buttery soft bread... Yum!

This post is linked at:
BYOB, Bake Your Own Bread hosted by Roxana's Home Baking
Recipe Box hosted by Bizzy Bakes

Here's the recipe from the book, Bread by Nick Malgieri
(with my modification and notes in blue)

Makes two 9-inch loaves

800g bread flour
30g sugar
170g room-temperature tap water, about 75°F
3 tsp active dry or instant yeast
1 cup or 225g whole milk, scalded and cooled
(replaced with 30g milk powder and 250ml water)
3 large eggs at room temperature
60g butter, cut into 8 pieces and softened
18g fine sea salt (reduced to 10g)

Two 9 x 5 x 3-inch loaf pans, buttered and the bottoms lined with parchment paper
(I have one 10 cm x 20 cm loaf pan and one 11 cm x 21 cm loaf pan, both buttered but didn't line them with any baking paper)

1. Combine the flour and sugar in a large bowl and set aside.

2. Pour the water into the bowl of an electric mixer and whisk in the yeast. Wait 5 mins, then whisk again. Whisk in the cooled milk and eggs.

3. Use a large rubber spatula to stir the flour mixture into the liquid a little at a time, stirring to combine between additions.

4. Place the bowl on the mixer with the dough hook and scatter pieces of butter on the surface of the dough; mix on the lowest speed for 1 min. Stop the mixer and let the dough rest for 15 min.

5. Increase the speed to medium, sprinkle in the salt, and beat the dough until it is smooth and elastic, for 2- 3 mins longer. Scrape the dough into an oiled bowl and turn it over so that the top is oiled. Cover with plastic wrap and let ferment until almost doubled in bulk, about 45 mins.

Note: For step 1-5, I've used a bread-maker instead of the electric mixer. I've placed all my ingredients into my bread-maker and use "dough" setting to knead and prove the dough for 1 hr. 

6. Invert the dough to a lightly floured work surface. Flatten the dough to a disk. Fold the two sides in to overlap at the middle, then roll the top toward you all the way to the end, jelly-roll style. Invert, flatten, and repeat. Return the dough to the bowl (oil the bowl again if necessary), cover, and let ferment until fully doubled, 30-45 mins. Note: I've skipped step 6.

7. Invert the dough to a floured work surface and shape it into a rough square. Use a bench scraper to cut the dough into 2 equal rectangles, each about 715g. Pull the narrow ends of 1 rectangle of dough outward to widen. From one of the wide ends fold the sides in about 1 inch or so, then roll down from the top as for turning the dough. Drop the roll into one of the pans, seam side down. Repeat with the second loaf and pan.

8. Cover with oiled or sprayed plastic wrap and let the loaves proof until they have risen about 1/2 inch above the rim of the pan. Once they're close to the top of the pan, set a rack a notch below the middle level and preheat the oven to 400°F (or 180°C fan forced). Note: My second proving took about 1 hr.

9. Place the loaves in the oven and immediately lower the temperature to 375°F. Bake until well risen and deep golden, with an internal temperature of at least 200°F, 30 to 40 mins. Note: My loaves were baked at 180°C fan forced for 30 min.

10. Unmold the loaves and cool on a rack on their sides. Wrap and keep at room temperature, or double wrap and freeze.

Happy Baking

Sorry for being "nag" but here are some reminders about the coming events... This must be typical mummy-cultivated syndrome... LOL!

• Cook Like a Star event with Nigella Lawson theme is postponed to June 2013.
• Two events coming up...

One is my Little Thumbs Up event with pineapple theme.

 

This event starts on 5 Feb and ends in 2 weeks on 18 Feb 2013. Simply cook or bake any recipe with pineapple and link up with my first pineapple post. For more details of this event, please refer to this.

Two is Cook like a Star, Delia Smith blog hop event starting on 1st Mar 2013. This event is hosted by me, Bake for Happy Kids, Baby Sumo from Eat your heart out and Mich from Piece of Cake. We are looking for a trend-setter of this event! Fore more details about trend setter, please refer to my previous post.

Last but not least, we are looking for HOSTESS for Little Thumbs Up!

Please email us at zoebakeforhappykids[at]gmail[dot]com or Doreen at muihiong71[at]gmail[dot]com if you are interested to host any coming Little Thumb Up events. Please feel free to let us know your chosen ingredient and the month that you would like to host this event and we can discuss further via email. Ciao!