Farmhouse White Bread

2 loaves of bread

• 375 g ap flour
• 550 g bread flour
• 600 g water and/or milk
• 3 tsp salt
• 4 tsp yeast
• 4 tsp sugar
• 4 tsp oil

In a very large bowl, stir together the all-purpose flour, yeast, salt, and sugar (I use a wooden spoon). Add the canola oil and the milk. Mix well, then continue to stir vigorously, slowly adding 1 cup of the bread flour at a time, until you have a soft, slightly sticky dough; this should take several minutes.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for about 6 or 7 minutes, adding more flour as necessary to keep the dough from sticking to your hands or the work surface.

Place the mixing bowl over the dough, and let it rest for 20 minutes. This rest period is called the autolyse.

Sprinkle flour in the dough bowl, place the dough in it, liberally dust it with flour, and cover it with a damp tea towel (not terry cloth, as it will shed lint on your dough). Or put it in a straight sided plastic container with a snap-on lid and mark the spot on the container that the dough will reach when it has doubled in volume.

Set it somewhere that is preferably between 70F and 78F for 60 to 90 minutes.

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.

Shaping and proof
Turn the risen dough out onto a lightly floured work surface, flattening gently with your hands to break up any large air bubbles. Divide the dough into two equal pieces.

Shape the dough into loaves and dust the tops with flour. Place loaves seam side down in greased loaf pans. I like my sandwich breads to be tall, so I use smaller loaf pans. They call this size a 1-pound loaf pan, and it measures 8-1/2 inches x 4-1/2 inches and is just under 3 inches tall.

Cover the loaves with a damp tea towel and let them rise for 45 to 60 minutes. When you lightly poke the dough with a floured finger it should spring back just a little.

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.

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 top two photos.



Bake at 375 degrees* for 35 minutes or until the loaves are golden brown and the bottoms sound hollow if tapped. Remove immediately from pans and let cool on a wire rack. Try to wait at least 40 minutes before cutting into a loaf. Store at room temperature or freeze in zipper freezer bags. Make sure loaves are completely cooled before sealing in bags.

Update: I've started baking all of my pan loaves on a heated baking stone (in order to simulate the ceramic hearth deck of my 7-foot wide commercial deck oven in the someday-bread-bakery-to-be), and the results have been wonderful. The bottoms of the loaves are nice and evenly brown, and I think that extra initial burst of heat makes the loaves end up even taller. Just like with pizzas and freeform loaves, you need to preheat your stone so that it's nice and hot when you put the bread in. Since Farmhouse White bakes at just 375 degrees, 30 to 45 minutes is usually enough.