As promised yesterday, here is my new favorite bread recipe. It was developed by King Arthur Flour, and it’s great because it takes about 5 minutes of hands-on time (more if you’re juggling a cranky 10 month-old while mixing ingredients, etc). This bread makes great toast, it makes a good sandwich and, of course, it’s great right out of the oven with a bowl of soup.
Since it’s a proprietary recipe, they recommend that you use their brand of flour to make it. I’ve been using Wheat Montana, and my favorite is their Prairie Gold (whole wheat) flour. My only other advice is to make sure it’s a pretty wet dough – if your flour is older, you might want to add some more water, or the bread will be really dense. It should be wetter than chocolate chip cookie dough, though not quite pourable.
It makes one loaf of bread, but you can double it if you want to give a loaf away 🙂 Or, it makes a couple of nice, small loaves, and the other day I baked a batch in my 7″ Dutch Oven so I could hollow it out into a bread bowl for crab dip.
Be sure to have some butter ready when you pull this out of the oven!
Ingredients
1 cup lukewarm water
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup melted butter or vegetable oil
3 tablespoons molasses, maple syrup, dark corn syrup, or brown sugar corn syrup
2 teaspoons instant yeast
1/4 cup Baker’s Special Dry Milk or nonfat dry milk
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
3 cups King Arthur whole wheat flour, white whole wheat preferred
Directions
1) Heavily grease an 8 1/2″ x 4 1/2″ loaf pan. This loaf tends to stick, so be sure to grease the pan thoroughly with non-stick vegetable oil spray.
2) Combine all of the ingredients in a large bowl. Beat the mixture vigorously for about 3 minutes; an electric mixer set on high speed works well here. You should have a very sticky dough. It won’t be pourable, but neither will it be kneadable. Scoop it into the prepared pan.
3) Cover the pan with lightly greased plastic wrap, and let it rise for 60 to 90 minutes; it should just about rise to the rim of the pan, perhaps just barely cresting over the rim. While the dough is rising, preheat the oven to 350°F.
4) Uncover the bread, and bake it for about 40 to 45 minutes, tenting it with aluminum foil after 20 minutes. The bread is done when it’s golden brown on top, and an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center registers between 190°F and 195°F. Remove it from the oven, and after 5 minutes turn it out onto a rack. Brush with melted butter, if desired; this will keep the crust soft. Cool the bread completely before cutting it. [HA! Go ahead and try 🙂 ]