The Perfect Old Fashioned Sandwich Bread

I’ve been making bread now for about 35 years and, I tell you what, there is nothing like homemade bread hot out of the oven with butter. Mmm mm! And this particular bread is really something. Your grandma would be mighty proud of this here recipe.

Now, I use a KitchenAid mixer to make my bread. It really kneads the dough up just right. If you don’t have one, though, you can do it all by hand…which I recommend if you're stressed or angry. It’s actually quite "therapedic."

Okay, let's begin...

Ingredients:

2 tbsp yeast

2 tbsp sugar

2 cups of filtered room temperature water (not tap water)

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup cold pressed olive oil

6 cups all-purpose flour

1 tbsp salt

Instructions:

1. Mix together yeast, sugar, and water in your mixing bowl.

2. Cover the bowl and let the yeast activate. This should take approx. 30 min.

(Make sure your water is not too hot. It will kill the yeast.)

3. Add sugar and olive oil to the mixture.

6. Add your 6 cups of all-purpose flour. I use Bob’s Red Mill Organic White All-purpose flour. It really works great.

7. Add in salt. I use pink Himalayan salt or kosher salt.

8. Mix in KitchenAid mixer with dough hook until it forms into a ball and the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

9. Grease up a separate bowl with butter and turn out your dough into the buttered bowl. Roll the dough around in the bowl to cover the dough with butter. Continue rolling dough around in the bowl until it forms a ball.

10. Cover and let rise until it doubles in size. This should take approx. 30-40 min. You can speed this up by placing the bowl in a warm place (near a warm stove). Just don’t forget it. You might want to set a timer.

11. After it has doubled in size, turn it out onto a lightly floured, clean surface. Cut in half and knead each piece, removing all the air bubbles. Form the two pieces into round loaves. Butter up two loaf pans and place the loaves in them.

12. Let rise again until they almost double in size. They will finish rising in the oven.

13. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place in oven and cook for 30 mins.

14. Remove from the oven and turn out your loaves onto a cooling rack for 30 minutes or more. Your bread should have a nice, crisp crust with a soft, spongy center. Make sure your loaves have totally cooled before bagging or storing in a container. If you don’t let them totally cool, the steam will make them soggy.