This batter bread sandwich loaf recipe is similar to the no knead bread recipe we have done, but its even easier. Plus it makes a sandwich loaf bread, which is a lot easier to use for making sandwiches than artisan bread.
Batter Breads have been around for a long time, but recent recipes by Fleischmann’s and Cooks Illustrated have offered some improvements, our recipe is adapted from them.
1 ½ cups bread flour 9 ozs 260 grams
¾ cup whole wheat flour 3.4 ozs 96 grams
1 packet or 2 ¼ teaspoons active dry yeast
1 ¼ cups hot water 10 ozs 283 grams
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons hot water
1 egg optional egg wash before baking
2 tablespoons wheat germ or bran optional
Add the bread flour, whole wheat flour and yeast into a standing mixer with a dough mixer blade attached. Put in the wheat germ/bran if you want to use it.
Mix in standing mixer for one minute on low speed.
Add in the melted butter, honey, and 1 ¼ cups hot water, not boiling, just 100 - 120F hot, OK?
Then mix the batter for 4 minutes on medium speed. If the dough sticks to the sides too much, stop halfway through and scrape down the sides.
Be careful about putting the spatula in the mixer bowl while it is running. Learn from me.
Detach the dough blade from the mixer and remove it and the bowl from the mixer. Scrape the dough off the dough blade, but let the blade sit in the dough in the bowl.
Cover the bowl and blade with a towel. Let rise for 20 minutes in a warm place. I use the oven that I have preheated for a few minutes. A warm furnace room, or a hot sunny window works also.
Put the mixer bowl back on the mixer. Dissolve the salt into the 2 tablespoons of warm water then add to bowl of dough, mix on low speed to incorporate.
Use vegetable oil spray to coat a 8 ½ x 4 ½ loaf pan. This is the more narrow kind of loaf pan, it will give a higher rise.
Pour the bread dough into the loaf pan.
Cover the pan with plastic wrap that has been sprayed with oil. When the dough has risen to just below the lip of the loaf pan, remove the plastic wrap and let the dough rise to just above the rim of the loaf pan.
Optional: you can glaze the dough with an egg wash at this point. Scramble the one egg and apply lightly.
Bake in a 375F oven for about 45 minutes, when the internal temp of the loaf is about 208 - 210 degrees, its done.
After putting on a cooling rack, unwrap the end of a stick of butter and rub it over the top of the loaf to give it a sheen and more flavor.
Kim Beall
Oh! Eric! Here's a variation you must try: Pancake bread! I make this using my sourdough starter, but I'm sure you can do the same thing with your basic no-knead batter, too. (BTW: do you have a sourdough starter? If not, I can send you some of mine - I am TOLD it's descended from one that was on the Oregon Trail, though I do take that with a grain of salt 😉 ) Anyway, just do what you normally do to make bread, but substitute two eggs plus however much milk you need to add up to one cup, for one of the cups of water, plus add a teaspoon of cinnamon, a teaspoon of vanilla, and some fresh grated nutmeg, then bake it as you usually do. When it's done, slice it and put it in the freezer, and when you want pancakes, just pull out a few slices, toast them and slather them with whatever you normally put on your pancakes. (I'm betting maple syrup, right?) I'm thinking of trying this with blueberries in, too, but haven't yet!
Beth
I am a little confused when your sister said use some milk to improve flavor, did she mean when you added the 2T of water use milk instead of water with the salt or just add more milk in general? I am very interested in the recipe I just wish you would have let the bread baking expert do the video, then maybe there would not have been so much confusion since she has had more practice. But even with all the bloopers you did turn out a nice loaf of bread which leads me to believe it is an easy recipe that a beginner should be successful at and for that I thank you.
Strgzr
Yes PLEASE tell me when to add milk and how much. (Can you email me?)
Strgzr
Ok, I'm royally messing it all up. I tried guessing milk, so where you said 1-1/4C warm water, I added in 1% milk to make it 1-1/2C and since it was cold, I put in microwave few minutes to warm up again, and not having thermometer, tested with finger to make sure not too hot(whatever temp that was haha), but after adding dough very runny, not at all like yours, so added in another 1/4C bread flour, which helped a little, but not enough, but now going ahead and doing the oven warming/rising and see what happens 🙁
Don't see how to add pic in here, so will comment after it's all done...
Dough stll too wet, added in 1/2C more bread flour, then it finally did the stick to bowl thing, so moved it over into loaf pan (mine is 8x4)...
In 10min it was about bubbling out of pan,and still wet dough- so punched down, put all out of pan onto floured surface and went back to old method of kneading and adding flour until it was less "runny" and more like bread dough-then cut into two pieces, put one back into pan and other into square pan, and let rise another 20-30min!...
Results: two small compact loaves - but good tasting. Guess I'll try to keep rising loaf in one pan next time! I just have to figure out liquid 🙁
Eric Gunnar Rochow
wow, sorry that happened. trust it works out better next time!