There truly is no greater feeling than seeing your kids enjoy food you have made, especially when you have poured your heart and soul into that food. For me, that’s been bread. I’ve been working so hard on perfecting each type I make and I truly feel this sandwich bread is some of the best! I was inspired by a few different Pinterest recipes and tweaked it slightly each time! I do prefer a saltier bread so you may want to bring the salt down if you don’t prefer salt. Remember though, salt in it of itself is not the enemy that we have been conditioned to believe. Salt brings out so much amazing flavor!

Anyways- back to the recipe! The only tricky thing about this recipe is timing. You will need to feed your levain the day before based on the time you want to start this bread AND based on your levain and how quickly it rises. Everyone is different so I recommend learning your levain for at least a week prior to attempting this bread. I just want you to be as successful as possible the first try! I personally have found that I can make this bread 14-16 hours after feeding my levain. That may look like 10-12 hours for you based on how warm your home is, how active your starter was etc. Once you start the actual bread process, you are looking at 8-11 hours until you will be serving the bread (not including cool down time). You can also obviously make, cool, and store right away as well.

Additionally- this recipe calls for a large amount of levain, especially if you are double or tripling it. So make sure to feed accordingly the night or day before (based on bake start time).

This recipe makes up 1 large bread loaf, so double or triple as you see fit. This is the pan I use

Ingredients

• 1 cup levain
• 1/2 cup milk (warmed)
• 1 cup water
• 3 1/2 – 4 cups flour + more for sprinkling on counter
• 3 TBSP melted butter
• 1 TBSP fine salt

Directions

• Either by dough hook or mixer, mix all of the ingredients together- starting with liquids and then slowly adding the flour, one cup at a time. Let sit for 15 minutes
• Sprinkle flour on counter and knead dough for 10 minutes, adding any additional flour to make the dough elastic and soft
• Cover and let bulk ferment 8 hours
• Spread the dough on the counter and fold each side into the middle, making a loaf shape. Tuck the sides to build surface tension and place in loaf tine
• Cover and let rise for 2 hours
• Preheat the oven to 350 and baking 40-50 minutes
• Rub the top of the loaf with butter as soon as it comes out of the oven
• Let cool before slicing and storing