I just love it when Brandy shows up for a post…don’t y’all? 🙂 She’s sharing a bread recipe today – and I know y’all love bread as much as I do! Thanks Brandy!
This recipe came from The Southern Appalachian Heritage book and is one of several I have tried from its pages. It’s not really a sourdough in the truest sense (since it’s not self-perpetuating, as far as I can tell), but it does use a pre-ferment or sponge. This bread has excellent shelf-life, especially if kept in cool conditions.
The original recipe was somewhat vague, so I’ve adapted it. Another note is that the more bread you bake, the taller your bread will be. I read it in the Foxfire Cookbook and might not have believed it if I hadn’t experienced it myself. Something about your home having more yeasty goodness the more you bake bread. Sometimes, my bread has gotten so tall I’ve worried it would reach the top of the oven. Magic, I tell you!
Not-So-Sourdough Bread
For the starter:
- 2 cups warm water (no more than 120° F)
- 2 cups plain flour
- 1 tablespoon yeast (or two packets of yeast, not instant)
Mix well & leave until bubbly and alive! This may take several hours in the Winter or just one in the Summer. You may reserve a cup of this mixture for later, but it will lose its zing over time, so I start new each time.
For the dough, add these ingredients to the starter:
- 1/4 cup milk
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 2 beaten eggs
- 1 stick of softened or melted butter
- Enough flour to make a soft dough
- Knead all of this for ten minutes, taking care to be sure the dough is neither too sticky nor too dry.
- Let rise in a greased bowl until doubled, an hour or so depending on the warmth of your home. I use my back porch as a proofing area, since it is quite warm in the Summer.
- Knead another ten minutes and shape into two loaves. Do this by flattening the dough into a sort of rectangle and then rolling it up into a loaf. Tuck the ends under and pinch the seams so they do not come undone during the baking.
- Let rise in greased pans until the dough is an inch or so above the top of the pans.
- Heat oven to 375° F and then bake for 35 minutes, or until the bread is 190° F internally. Cool ten minutes and enjoy!
Brandy spends her days watching the skies and tending her children on her little homestead in town at the foothills of the Appalachian mountains.
I followed your page from THM, does this fit into the THM meal plans?? Just asking as I know Gwen has a recipe for bread too.
No, this isnt THM. If one of my recipes is, it says THM Compliant at the bottom of the recipe print box and it’s listed in the THM index. 🙂
http://www.stacymakescents.com/trim-healthy
We’ve only been on THM since January and I’ve been blogging for 3+ years, so most of my recipes aren’t THM. 🙂
No…I make my own starter. I do have friends who like the starters from Cultures for Health. 🙂
Such a helpful blog!
I am new to baking and was wondering if any of you have ever used any starters from Sourdough’s International.. I have a friend who loves it but I’m looking for some more opinions.
I was directed to your blog from Simply Homemaking..when I went and saw how lovely her bread was I knew I had to give it a try. It came out wonderful
and delicious. I’ll be posting about it on Wednesday, and I wanted you to know that I’m mentioning your place and also Simply Homemaking…Thank you for sharing your recipe..You’ll see the two breads in comparison on the blog tomarrow.. WOW….. I hope you’ll stop by and give a look see..:)
This is my friend, Brandy’s recipe….I need to try it!
And now, thanks to Faith, this is todays Whistlin’ Wednesday post on Be Wit’n Wise.
Feel free to check it out: http://bewitnwise.blogspot.com/2012/12/ww-not-so-sourdough-bread-recipe.html
Thanks for posting this recipe, I know we’re going to have to try it out soon!
And I just so happen to be mixing up a batch right now. 🙂
Approximately how much flour would I need to use to make a soft dough? I am new to making bread.
Hi! Add about two cups to the sponge with the other ingredients and stir it well, then add another half a cup at time until it makes a stiff dough (difficult to stir). Knead from there on out, adding tiny bits of flour as needed to avoid it sticking to the counter too much. Scrape any bits of stuck-on dough off the counter with a spatula to avoid all that clumping up on your dish cloth. Best wishes!
Thanks for sharing this recipe!
You’re welcome!
Just another note about the bread I made today. I made it 100% freshly ground whole hard white wheat. I’m baking again tomorrow. I gave away all of the rolls I made today that we didn’t consume at lunch or supper for a fellowship lunch at church on Sunday. : ) The rolls made a great sandwich for supper. I will probably start using these for hamburgers. Much better than what I have been using. Lighter in texture and it wouldn’t be hard to put a hamburger and all the fixings on and still be able to chew what was in your bite. : ) Thanks again.
I just ground wheat yesterday too. 🙂 I need to make a batch of my hamburger buns to freeze – thanks for the reminder!!
cant wait for it to cool down here so i can turn my oven back on, been 110 for almost a solid week now and while i may be a tad crazy im not crazy enough to turn on the oven in that kinds of heat:(
It’s been cooling off here, but I’m waiting for the same thing! Hope to bake next week. 🙂
Made this this morning…made one loaf and 16 rolls. Everyone enjoyed the rolls (we ate these with the stew for lunch). I haven’t cut into the loaf, but it was over 192 degrees when I took it out (35 minutes). It looks wonderful and crusty. I only baked the rolls for 13 – 15 minutes. They didn’t stay crusty, but were wonderful. Nothing was crumbly at all. I used all of the “sponge” in the bread….couldn’t bear the thought of throwing it away or not knowing what to do with it. : ) Thanks.
Teresa, you made me hungry. Thanks a lot. :-p
Can I make this in a bread machine?
Hi, Shayla! I’ve never used a bread machine, but I would say no since it makes two loves. I can’t even use my big mixer to knead it, simply too much dough. Sorry about that. 🙂
Just reporting in…
http://www.simplyhomemaking60.blogspot.com/2012/08/sometimes-i-make-white-bread.html
Yolanda, you rock.
*blush* awww…
Glad to hear back from you. Sometimes, I add more salt, too. Maybe we can get Stacy to change it to two teaspoons. . . 😉
Sure thing!
Ah, nice, a recipe with eggs! I use only home-ground whole wheat flour, and so my bread has been a little crumbly. Hubby LOVES the bread, but we all hate the crumble, and we were discussing that I should probably look for a recipe with eggs (I wasn’t looking forward to how many failed experiments to find the right combination). Thanks for saving me the time of looking up a recipe, although, due to digestion issues, I think I will try to convert this to sourdough. YUM O!
Eggs do lend a wonderful texture to bread, don’t they? 🙂
Sounds delish, and since I am always hunting for good bread recipes I will try it. But I have a question–how does this recipe have anything to do with sourdough? I was looking for it to be mild sourdough or a sourdough that can serve as starter from one day to the next. (So I would make this dough and then reserve half of it for the next day then add more flour and water/milk to double the dough and bake half of it, reserving half for the next day. And so on. I think, ;))
I am enjoying your blog, Stacy. Many thanks!
You can treat it like a sourdough, but I have found the starter would weaken over time. For that reason (and the fact that I don’t bake bread every week), I just start fresh. This may be different if it were left on the counter instead of in the fridge. I started making this bread years before I made kefir and understood how temperature impacted cultures. Click on the link to learn more about pre-ferments and their benefits. It is very mild, not at all sour. My husband, who loves very sour sourdough, prefers this bread to all others I make.
Looks delicious!
I agree! 🙂
I soak presoak mine as well, but I have to make dairy free bread. I am sure that this one is amazing though!
It would be easy to leave out the milk and use another fat besides butter. 🙂
I am very interested in trying this grain—have not ever heard to much about it–so is very new to me–thanks for the recipe–now to find this at my local health food store
I am going to give this a try today. 🙂
YummY! Ok, I’ve got to ask….does the iron have anything to do with the proofing? Thinking of all the places I’ve heard about incubating yogurt, I wasn’t sure if the iron is providing a warm moist (steamy) chamber or something?? On another note, I totally thought of you yesterday when I was using one of my ‘blue towels’ (aka surgical huck towel) to ring out my grated zucchini. It worked so much better than using cheesecloth or paper towels:-). Speaking of which, if you know a surgeon or surgical nurse, ask them to snag any unused huck towels after surgery bc once a pack of towels is open they cannot reuse them and have to just throw them out. I haven’t paid yet for a huck towel:-) Ok, train of random thoughts complete 🙂
No, the iron doesn’t have anything to do with the proofing. 🙂 It just happened to be there when I took the photo. I use my back porch for bread because it is very warm in the Summer.