Farmhouse White: An Easy Basic White Sandwich Bread Recipe (2024)

The Perfect Loaf for Beginning Bread Bakers

This is my most popular bread recipe, which I've been baking since 2000. It was originally published on A Year in Bread, a jointbakingprojectBeth, Kevin, and I started back in 2007.There were over 170 comments on the original Farmhouse White post, many from nervous novices who are nowconfidentbread bakers.

If you're just learning how to bake your own bread, you might find my Ten Tips on How To Bake Better Artisan Breads at Home helpful.

I also explain how to shape bread dough into sandwich loaves and offer some more bread baking tips in this post. And you'll find links to more bread recipes in the Farmgirl Fare Recipe Index.

A classic, flavorful white bread made with real milk, not dry milk powder.

This really is a very simple and easy recipe, so don't let all these paragraphs scare you away. I wanted to carefully explain each step and answer the questions I'm often asked about making this bread, so the instructions would be clear to beginning bakers.

I also included a lot of the helpful little things I'velearned during the many years I've been baking and perfecting this bread. Enjoy!

This is the kind of old-fashioned, homey bread that a few people were lucky enough to grow up eating, and everyone else wishes they had. It's wholesome and filling and about as far from Wonder Bread as a basic white sandwich bread can get. I've watched people who claim they never eat white bread gobble this stuff up.

For instance, tossing in just a half cup each of wheat bran and oat bran in place of one cup of the flour creates a pleasant variation that's especially nice toasted. If you replace the all-purpose flour with white whole wheat flour(which is 100% whole grain flour that is made from a 'lighter' variety of wheat) you'll end up with a healthier, heartier bread that still tastes more like white than whole wheat—perfect for those picky eaters.

Here are a few other things you could do:

—Substitute one cup of cracked wheat, cornmeal, polenta, or rolled oats for one cup of the all-purpose flour.

—Try a cup or two of stone ground rye flour.

—Add a few Tablespoons of wheat germ.

—Make it with a cup or two of oat flour, which you can easily make by whizzing old-fashioned rolled oats in a food processor for about 30 to 60 seconds, depending on the texture you desire. Oat flour is also great in pancakes, muffins, and scones.

—Stir in some honey for a sweeter loaf.

—Turn it into cinnamon raisin bread by mixing cinnamon sugar and raisins into the dough, or flatten out the dough and sprinkle them over it when you're shaping your loaves.

—Toss in a few handfuls of chopped fresh herbs.

—Knead in several cloves of smashed roasted garlic, a few glugs of good olive oil (in place of the other oil), and plenty of freshly grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano.

The possibilities are limited only by your imagination and tastebuds.

Sometimes I'll need less flour than what is called for, sometimes more. Never add all of the flour at once; it's easier to knead in a little more flour than a little more water (though my bread buddy Kevin says that spritzing your dough with a spray bottle of water works great if you do need to add more moisture to it).

For burger buns, I shape the dough into balls and flatten them into thick rounds, then brush the tops with water and sprinkle them with coarse salt just before baking.

I've even shaped this dough into free form loaves of sweet French bread (meaning it's not sourdough) and baked them directly on a hot baking stone.

A lot of white sandwich bread recipes call for dry milk powder, but I don't see the point of it. If you want more flavor, simply replace some or all of the water in the recipe with milk. For years I made Farmhouse White with water, and it was perfectly fine, but now I always make it with milk.

This recipe makes three loaves of bread because in my opinion, if you have freezer space or friends, there's no reason to bake only one loaf of bread at a time. Bread freezes beautifully—and you won't believe how much your friends will love you if you present them with a freshly baked loaf.

I played around with different flours in this recipe and finally settled on a combination of organic all-purpose and organic bread flour, but you can use 100% all-purpose flour or 100% bread flour if desired. The best thing to do is experiment and see what you like.

Farmhouse White Sandwich Bread

Makes 3 loaves, about 1½ pounds (24 ounces) each

Ingredients:
4 cups (1 lb, 4 oz / 566 grams) organic all-purpose flour

1½ Tablespoons* (17 grams) instant yeast

2 Tablespoons granulated or brown sugar or honey

2 Tablespoons safflower oil (or your favorite neutral oil, or melted butter)

4 cups (2 pounds / 908 grams) warm organic milk (or water), about 85° F

About 6 cups (1 lb, 13 oz / 825 grams) organic bread flour (or use more organic all-purpose flour)

1½ Tablespoons (22 grams) salt

* To bake an even better loaf, you can reduce the amount of yeast to 1 Tablespoon (or even less). This will make your dough rise more slowly, so you'll just need to increase the rising times. You can reduce the yeast in pretty much any bread recipe; a lot of bakers go by the formula, 'half the yeast and double the rising time.'

Instructions:
Mixing and Fermentation (first rise)

In a very large bowl, stir together the all-purpose flour, yeast, and sugar (I use a wooden spoon). Make a small well in the middle of the flour mixture and pour in the oil and the milk.

Mix well, then continue to stir vigorously, slowly adding 1 cup of the bread flour at a time and stirring it in, until you've added 3 to 4 cups of bread flour and have a sticky, shaggy dough; this should take a few minutes.

Set the dough somewhere that is preferably between 70°F and 75°F until it has doubled in size, about 60 to 75 minutes. Ideally, the dough itself should be between 70°F and 75°F. It's fine if your dough is cooler; it'll just take longer to rise and will end up even tastier.

When the dough is ready to be shaped, you should be able to push a floured finger deep into it and leave an indentation that doesn't spring back. Unless your dough is rising in a straight sided container, it can be difficult to judge whether it has doubled in size, which is the guideline most recipes use. I find the finger poking method to be more reliable.

Shaping and Proofing (second rise)

Cover the loaves with a damp tea towel or flour sack towel and let them rise until the dough springs back just a little when you gently poke it with a floured finger, about 40 to 60 minutes.

If you let the loaves rise too long, they may not have enough energy left to rise once they're in the oven, and they may even collapse. I was always so afraid this would happen that for years I unknowingly under-proofed my loaves of Farmhouse White.

This underproofed loaf went in the oven a little too soon.

While the bread was still delicious, you can see that the dough had so much 'oven spring' that it basically blew apart the side of the loaf. I finally started letting the loaves rise a little longer and was rewarded with the more evenly shaped and visually appealing bread that you see in the previous photos.

Bake at 375° for 35 minutes, or until the loaves are golden brown and the bottoms sound hollow if tapped (you need to carefully remove a loaf from the pan to check this). Remove the loaves immediately from the pans and let them cool on a wire rack. The bread will continue to bake inside while it's cooling, so try to wait at least 40 minutes before cutting into a loaf.

Store at room temperature or freeze in zipper freezer bags. I like to use the 2.5 gallon jumbo zipper food storage bags, which will fit two loaves. Make sure the loaves are completely cooled before sealing in bags.