Basic Yeasted White Bread

A recipe from The Sourdough Home. This recipe is here to help people learn fundamental baking skills so they can go on and learn about sourdough without having to fight fundamental bread making problems.

Ingredients

Instructions

Yield:

1 large or 2 smaller loaves.

Prep time:

Cook time:

Ready in:

Recipe Type:

Bread

1. Put the 1 1/4 cups of room temperature water in a mixing bowl.
2. Stir in the 2 tsp of sugar and the yeast.
3. Let the combination sit for a few moments and get a bit active, primarily to ensure that the yeast isn't dead.
4. Now pour in 2 of the cups of flour called for in this recipe, followed by the salt. Stir the salt and sugar water, the flour, and the yeast together. It should form a batter pretty quickly. Stir until you see strands of gluten forming.
5. Now add another 1/2 cup of flour and keep stirring. It should thicken up, and should get harder to stir. If not, add another 1/2 cup of flour and keep stirring.
6. Turn out onto work surface and knead.
7. Shape into a ball, place into oiled bowl, roliing the ball around so that all surfaces are coated with oil. Cover and let rise in bowl until doubled in volume, 1-2 hours.
8. Punch down, knead a bit more, shape into loaf and place in loaf pan. Let rise until doubled - this rise should take only half as long as the first rise.
9. Preheat oven to 400°F, bake for about 30 minutes.

Tips for Success

Cooking Tips

Ingredient Tips

Reviews

Source Information

Classic Sourdoughs, A Home Baker's Handbook, Mike Avery,

• As you might guess from the title, this is not a sourdough recipe. This recipe is here to help people learn fundamental baking skills so they can go on and learn about sourdough without having to fight fundamental bread making problems.
• It's been a while since I made this bread, and I had forgotten just how good it is. It's a white bread, which - despite what the whole grain fanatics tell you - really isn't the end of the world. It has a firm, tight crumb; a nicely browned crust, and a rich wheaty taste. It toasts well, and that's always a plus at breakfast time. Or even at BLT time, for that matter.
• This recipe is from James Beard's "Beard On Bread," which remains one of my favorite books on bread. I have changed some quantities, and changed the instructions considerably (and probably for the worse).
• I hope your first loaf of kneaded yeasted bread delights you. If it isn't quite what you wanted it to be, you might check the bread troubleshooting tips in another part of this web page. You might give this recipe a few more tries, and then move on to sourdough.