Recipe Hunting: Sandwich Bread

I  made this recipe today, after more than a year since the last time I made homemade bread. Our favorite store bread is the Macey's Cottage white bread. It's got the perfect balance of texture and flavor and tastes magical with peanut butter and grape jam, but also works well with turkey and tuna fish. I prefer wheat bread for ham, and Macey's also delivers well there. I like the bread because it's cheaper than the other, less healthy brands (it's baked fresh, so no preservatives) and, though I usually fill the top shelf of the freezer with it, my family gobbles it up quickly and it doesn't have time to go bad on us, despite the missing preservatives.

However...


Macey's recently raised the price from the long-time $1.49 a loaf to $1.69, and even more recently to $1.89 a loaf! This is kind of a lot of dough (ha ha... pun intended), especially since everything else on the planet is becoming more expensive, and my hubby was laid off just before Christmas. 

So...

I've been looking for a decent homemade sandwich bread recipe. In the past, the breads I've made have been very tasty, but a tad too soft and fluffy for building a good sandwich with. Butter and jam? Yes. Honey? Sure. Meat, cheese and veggies? Not so much. 

I found a couple of recipes to try, beginning today with this one from the King Arthur flour website. 

I don't have their brand of flour-- not even sure if local stores carry it, and I wasn't sure what they meant by the two choices for powdered milk-- I just used the "nonfat dry milk granules" measurement and my normal nonfat milk powder and crossed my fingers. I also used the larger measurement of water.  

And I doubled the recipe.

I should have made three loaves out of it, though, because after it rose in the pans (to about 1.5" above the edge, as instructed), I put it into the oven, where it promptly doubled in size. It's huge! 

Hard to really see just how much bigger this is than it ought to be, but it's very tall.

 But so far, we like the taste. It's not as flavorful as other breads I've made in the past, but that's ideal for sandwich bread. We quickly devoured the first loaf (two adults, three teenage boys and a 10 year-old girl can do that, you know) and the second will be gone soon as well. We broke out the electric knife for nice, smooth slicing and to avoid smashing the loaf.

First loaf, almost gone!!

Next time: I will double the recipe again, but make 3 loaves from it. I will also not let the dough rise past a single inch above the pan, and maybe not even that tall, before popping them in the oven.

This recipe gets a big thumbs up! from my family. It's a tad soft for sandwiches, but very close to what I'm seeking.