Sandwich bread

I've made a lot of bread over the last few years and I can say with confidence that this is the best sandwich loaf recipe I have found.  For those of you who are serious about eating excellent sandwich bread (if you refuse to buy anything other than Dave's Killer Bread you fall in to this category) I strongly encourage you to give this recipe a shot.

I got the recipe from The Bread Bible but you can also find it online here.  The difference between this recipe and most other recipes is the addition of bulgur wheat to the dough.  To cook the bulgur before you add it to the dough you soak it in boiling water until all the water is absorbed (about an hour) so that it goes from hard and crunchy to soft and chewy.  The flavor and texture that the bulgur adds to the bread is completely worth the extra step.  Bulgur wheat is relatively inexpensive and can be found in the bulk section of most good grocery stores (if you shop in a grocery store without a good bulk section, you have my deepest sympathies).

I've found the recipe (as with most recipes in The Bread Bible) to be a little overly complicated.  I know the author is working to create the most flavorful bread possible, but often it seems like extra steps are added that aren't completely necessary for achieving quality results.  When I make this bread I omit the second rising/shaping step which cuts approximately an hour off the process.  After mixing all the ingredients together and letting the bread go through its first full rise, I divide the dough (I always make a double batch to create two loaves), shape it and put it directly in to the loaf pans for a final rise.  By doing this I find that the final rise happens more quickly as well.

My only other piece of advise when following this recipe is that when making a double batch the ingredients can cause the standard Kitchen Aid mixer to overflow (as you can see from the photos below of the kneading process).  As long as you mix the ingredients together slowly at first, you should be able to incorporate everything without causing too big of a mess in the kitchen.

Lastly, slicing the bread in to even slices does take a little bit of practice.  I use to always ask LJ to slice the loaves once they had cooled because she has a much more stead hand than I do.  After slicing a few loaves myself, I've been able to create uniform slices with only a bread knife, though I have considered creating a jig to make the process easier.

The flour mixture covering the sponge

Dry bulgur

Soaking bulgur

Sponge bubbling through

Cooked bulgur is added

Slowly mixing everything together

The dough trying to escape during the kneading process

First rising

Split the dough after the first rising

Shaped dough in loaf pans for second rising

Finished rising

Slashed loaves going in to the oven

Finished product