Amish White Sandwich Bread

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Man you guys gotta make your own peanut butter.

Just get a big container of great value party peanuts at Wally world.

Put them in a Cuisinart or heavy duty blender & turn it on until you have peanut butter.

You will never buy it in the store again.
 
Man you guys gotta make your own peanut butter.

Just get a big container of great value party peanuts at Wally world.

Put them in a Cuisinart or heavy duty blender & turn it on until you have peanut butter.

You will never buy it in the store again.
I'm kinda partial to the Cashew Butter I make that same way.  Expensive though !!!

Sometimes I add a little oil to it.

Bear
 
I know this is an old thread but I was wondering how well this bread freezes and thaws for sandwiches later in the week.

I'm trying to get away from buying bread for our lunches and was hoping to make this once a week, cool it, slice it, and freeze it so we can make samiches as needed.

Thanks
 
I love this bread recipe. I got it off an Amish website (how's that for an oxymoron?) last year. I've played around with it a fair bit and would like to share a few things:

1. If you don't have (or don't wanna spend the money on) bread flour, add 4 TB of  vital wheat gluten (available in the flour aisle) to the recipe made with AP flour. It will help a lot.

2. If you don't want to make both loaves at once, put half the dough in a ziplock bag and refrigerate up to a week. When you wanna bake it, just shape it and let it rise for a couple hours in the loaf pan. This loaf will have more of a yeasty flavor than the 1st one. I haven't tried freezing the dough, but I think that would work as well.

3. Knead more than you think you should. This is a fool proof recipe and will work out well even if under kneaded. But if you take the time to really get the gluten formed, WOW!!. It rises beautifully and really enhances the texture. It takes a full 15-20 minutes in my KA mixer.

4. This recipe also makes decent pizza dough and great dinner rolls and cinnamon rolls. We're just the 2 of us, and don't need 2 huge loaves of bread, so we've had fun experimenting with the 2nd half of the dough. I made a batch of cinnamon rolls of which we only ate 2. After a few days they were getting a little stale, so I cut them up and made bread pudding. It was some of the best I've ever had, due to the texture of the cinnamon rolls.

This is the most versatile bread recipe I've ever found. It's easy, fun and cheaper than buying store bought "country white bread". Unlike the "artisan no knead" recipe that has been popular the last couple years, this one's not only really tasty, but good for "every day" bread.
 
Roller,

Your recipe looks very interesting, I think I'll try it. One thing though, I like to use a bread machine to mix the dough, I don't like to let it bake in the machine. Nnormally when you use the machine there is a certain order of the inheritances, the water first then any sugar, salt, oil, then the flour and finally the yeast. I'm wondering if I should follow those instructions for the bread machine, or do it the way you suggest in the machine. I'm going to need to use 1/2 the recipe for the machine and combine them later. I can almost smell it now.

Thanks Roller

Mike 
 
wow...nice revived thread!

Couple of questions...

sounds like ya'll are bread people, so I'm sure you can tell me what weight you're using in bread flour...about 30 oz?

boatbum...I was raised an old school bread maker (though rather than for quaint sentimentality, it was more likely that we were just poor), but am trying to use my KA more for bread making...care to post more info on your KA kneading?

I agree that the no knead recipe doen't work so well for sandwiches, but it makes a great bruschetta!

Can't wait to give this recipe a go :)
 
Just made this last night. Made one loaf of bread, 6 bagels and a large pizza, all from the same batch of dough. For the bagels I just sliced off a piece of dough, made it into a snake and formed the bagel shape. Then let them rise for another hour or so and boiled for about a minute and a half in a pot full of water with a half teaspoon of baking soda to facilitate browning and a firmer crust. After boiling, I sprinkled some with kosher salt and some with onion flakes. Then just baked along side the bread. I made the pizza a couple hours later. One of my favorites, Shrimp and clams with caramelized onion, hollandaise, spinach, and fresh mozzarella.

Had the pizza for dinner, a bagel for breakfast this morning and a sandwich made with the bread for lunch. All for maybe a buck's worth of ingredients for the whole batch. I really love this recipe!!
 
wow...nice revived thread!

Couple of questions...

sounds like ya'll are bread people, so I'm sure you can tell me what weight you're using in bread flour...about 30 oz?

boatbum...I was raised an old school bread maker (though rather than for quaint sentimentality, it was more likely that we were just poor), but am trying to use my KA more for bread making...care to post more info on your KA kneading?

I agree that the no knead recipe doen't work so well for sandwiches, but it makes a great bruschetta!

Can't wait to give this recipe a go :)
Sorry for the late reply, I didn't notice the question about the kneading before. I have the tilt head KA with the C shaped dough hook, so I can't comment on the newer spiral hook. Basically, I start off with the paddle and mix the water, sugar, vital wheat gluten and yeast. (the vitamin C in the vital wheat gluten really seems to give the yeast a boost) After it proofs, I mix in the oil, salt and 4 cups of the flour. Mix that on low until it comes together to from a REALLY sticky batter. Then I change out to the dough hook and add one more cup of flour. I'll usually mix this on speed #2 until I see what it's going to do. If the weather is extremely dry, this might be enough. Usually however, it's not, and the dough remains stuck to the side of the bowl. I'll add a quarter cup of flour at a time, kneading a minute or 2 between additions. As soon as it pulls away from the sides/bottom of the bowl, I know I'm there. Then I just let it knead on #2 until it looks satiny, usually around 10-15 minutes. At this point I'll do the "windowpane" or "membrane" test. (tear off a golf ball sized piece of dough and try to make a tiny pizza with it. If it stretches and forms a thin membrane through which you can easily see light, it's done kneading) If it tears too easily, I'll give it another 2 or 3 minutes. Once I get a good membrane I'm done.

On the kneading process. With the C shaped hook, you kinda have to keep an eye on it. Sometimes it will just all climb onto the hook and spin around, accomplishing nothing. When this happens I'll stick a wooden spoon while it's running and ease it off the hook. Or sometimes I'll tilt the head up while it's running and let it fall off the hook into the bowl. Sometimes, like this morning, It actually just kneads itself and I don't need to do anything. Sometimes it'll try to fling globs of dough across the kitchen. Really, it's going to do what it wants and I just need to make sure I'm there to prevent disasters. Kinda like babysitting my niece and nephew.

Long story short, the KA has made me enjoy making bread and improved the final product immeasurably. I was always falling short on the kneading time, ending up with bread flavored bricks. I also can't emphasize enough the importance of bread flour and/or vital wheat gluten or some sort of dough enhancer. They're relatively cheap and will allow the home baker to produce bakery quality bread just about every time.

**One thing I forgot to add, if you live in a city or anywhere that the municipal water treatment uses chlorine, USE FILTERED OR BOTTLED WATER.

I heard this tip on Alton Brown's show, and the switch made all the difference. Here in DC sometimes the tap water literally smells like pool water, and will kill yeast almost instantly.
 
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Mdboatbum - I've never had a problem using tap water that has residual chlorine in it with any yeast recipes including making wine and beer. If you're concerned just put the water for a recipe in a glass and let it sit for an hour and the chlorine will dissipate.
 
I just found the bread section today & decided to give this recipe a try. I have never baked a loaf of bread in my life, let alone made one from scratch, so I figured this would be the first of many failures during the learning process. I am happy to report though that for some reason - - - - - - - - - it turned out great!!! 
yahoo.gif
   I ate half of one loaf as soon as it came out of the oven - I couldn't stop! LOL  Thank you very much for sharing this recipe Roller! I am really glad I joined this forum :-)
 
Sorry to revive this thread yet again, but as it does seem to contain a lot of info on this extremely versatile recipe, I figured it should live on. I did a little experiment today with the exact dough recipe highlighted in this thread (with the addition of 2 TB of Vital Wheat Gluten as a dough conditioner and I used melted butter instead of oil). I made croissants. I made the full recipe and laminated it (5 turns) with a pound of butter in a 12"x12" square. (Google "laminating croissant dough", that's what I did) It was a HUGE pain in the butt, and took me the better part of the day, but it WAS SO WORTH IT!! I Made 1 dozen plain and 2 dozen with a chocolate marzipan filling consisting of 1TB of marzipan and 7 or 8 dark chocolate chips. Formed into croissants, brushed with an egg wash and baked at 375˚ for 25 minutes. The plain ones were quite good, in fact my wife insisted we make club sandwiches with them for dinner. The chocolate marzipan ones were absolutely incredible. I'm talking life changing, buy a beret and start talking with an accent kind of incredible. Crispy, flaky, chewy, rich and subtly sweet all at the same time. I'm not kidding, they were A M A Z I N G. And I'm not bragging, I'm chalking it all up to this dough recipe and beginner's luck. But seriously, try it, you won't believe how this simple dough easily transforms itself into one of the most feared bakery items there is. Your family will be amazed. And really it's not all that hard, it just takes some time. (sorry for the bad picture, my camera is on temporary assignment with a friend, phone was all I had)

This is one of the chocolate marzipan ones. SO FREAKING GOOD!!!!!


By the way, if anyone wants to keep score, I've now made white bread, rye bread, pizza, pretzels, bagels, calzone, pretzel dogs, beef/pork wellington, croissants and dinner rolls. ALL FROM THIS BASIC RECIPE!!!! If you're someone who is tired of paying high prices for baked goods or just want to be more self sufficient, you owe it to yourself to memorize this recipe. 2 cups water, 2/3 cup sugar, 1TB salt, 2 TB yeast, 1/4 cup oil, 6 cups flour. That's it. Really.
 
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