🔗 My Favorite Bread Recipes

Ido Perlmuter

I do a fair amount of baking, from bread to various pastries. Over the years, I've tried many, many recipes. I've done lots of quick breads, yeast breads, and sourdough. I've maintained my own sourdough starter cultures several times, the longest one for more than a year, but my long-term trips abroad means they can't last too long.

Here are my four favorite bread recipes by "use case". You don't need any fancy equipment to make these and can get by with pretty much anything you already have at home. For sandwich breads, I use aluminum Pullman-style loaf pans. These are pretty cool as you can make truly rectangular sandwich breads:

For Sandwiches: Anadama Bread

I'm always on the lookout for good bread recipes, specifically sandwich breads. Every Saturday evening I bake a sandwich bread for the week. Sourdough breads are great for sandwiches, as they taste great and last longer than modern yeast breads, but after coming back home from my most recent trip to the US and having to give up another sourdough starter, I went looking for a good sandwich bread recipe which uses regular yeast, one that uses whole wheat flour and healthy ingredients.

I also recently started working with Masa Harina (nixtamalized corn flour), and happened to come upon an interesting bread called Anadama Bread, apparently originating from the New England area of the US, which uses both whole wheat flour and a small amount of masa harina. I tried a few recipes and eventually settled on a fantastic recipe by Christina Ross at healthyfoodforliving.com. I can safely say this is my favorite bread recipe ever: It's extremely tasty, smells divine, and one of its best features is being very easy to slice without damaging it.

Anadama bread uses blackstrap molasses instead of sugar. I love molasses. It's full of vitamins, gives the bread a wonderful aroma, and imparts subtle smoky sweetness.

I'm putting a summarized version of the recipe here for posterity:

1. Combine 1/2 cup water and 1/4 cup masa harina in small saucepen over medium-low heat; whisk continuously until it starts to thicken, about 30-60 seconds.
2. Reduce heat to low and whisk in 2 tbsp of canola oil and 1/2 cup blackstrap molasses. Set aside to cool.
3. Scatter 1 package of active dry yeast over 1/2 cup warm water in a small bowl. Let sit until foamy, about 10 minutes.
4. Combine the cooled cornmeal mixture with the yeast mixture in the bowl of a stand mixer (I use a Kitchen-Aid); stir until well blended.
5. Add 2 cups whole wheat flour and 1 tsp salt; mix well with the paddle attachment.
6. Add 1 cup white whole wheat flour (I just use white all purpose flour, we don't have "white whole wheat flour"), just a bit at a time, stirring well after each addition.
7. Once the dough has pulled together, switch to the dough hook attachment and knead on low speed for ~15 minutes.
8. Lightly coat the bread in the mixer's bowl with canola oil (make sure to form it into a ball and turn it to cover it entirely with oil). Cover and let rise until doubled in volume (1-1.5 hours) in a warm place.
9. Preheat oven to 190℃.
10. Grease your bread pan.
11. Place dough on a clean work surface and roll into a rectangle. Fold the dough into thirds and pinch the seams closed, and place in the greased pan (to be honest, I don't do that, I just take it out of the bowl, stretch it lightly and place in my bread pan).
12. Let rise again until doubled in volume, about 1-1.5 hours.
13. Bake for about 28-30 minutes or until the top is golden brown (I use a thermometer).
14. Turn the loaf onto a wire rack and let cool before slicing and serving (I wait at least three hours before slicing).
15. Store in refrigerator or freezer in zip-lock bags.

For the Dinner Table: Beer Bread

Beer bread is bread that uses beer instead of water. It's not only delicious, it's also one of the easiest breads to bake. It's a no-knead bread, but without the long fermentation times. You simply combine the ingredients in kind of a half-assed way and shove it in the oven. Done. You can make it as a quick bread with baking powder, or with yeast (self-rising flour is easiest).

Beer bread is a great addition to the dinner table and I often bake it when hosting friends or family. It's got a unique taste and it goes great with pretty much anything on the table. It also works well for toast, but is only passable as a sandwich bread, probably because it's too moist. You generally want to finish it immediately anyway.

It's also a versatile bread, because you can greatly influence the flavor simply by choosing a different beer. I often use wheat beers such as Witbiers (e.g. Hoegaarden) or Hefewizens (e.g. Franziskaner, Paulaner or Weihenstephan), as their orange/banana/coriander flavors really go well with the bread, but you can go extra dark with a Stout (e.g. Guinness). You can also play with various additives such as cheese, garlic, herbs and anything you can think of.

Beer bread recipes often call for pouring melted butter on top of the bread 15 minutes before you take it out of the oven. This gives the bread a delightful crunchiness, but only right out of the oven. Wait too long, and it's gone.

I've tried many beer bread recipes over the years. Most use white flour, but for the past decade I mostly stuck with a wonderful whole wheat recipe by Susan at farmgirlfare.com, which is leavened with baking powder.

For posterity, here is the summarized recipe:

1. Heat oven to 190℃
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine:
   • 2 cups whole wheat flour
   • 1 cup all-purpose flour
   • 1 tbsp granulated sugar
   • 1 tsp salt
   • 1 tbsp baking powder
3. Slowly stir in 400 ml of beer (or 333 ml beer + 67 ml water) and mix just until combined. The batter will be thick and somewhat chunky.
4. Spread the batter in a greased pan.
5. Bake until done, about 45 minutes.
6. Optionally, 15 minutes before baking is finished, melt some butter and pour it over the bread.
7. Cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes.
8. Remove from pan and cool 10 more minutes.
9. Serve warm.

For Toast, Dipping and Quick Spreads: Sourdough

Sourdough is a very broad category and you have tons of options. My favorite sourdough recipe is called "Field Blend #2" and it comes from baker Ken Forkish's fantastic book Flour Water Salt Yeast, which I highly recommend if you're looking to get serious about baking. The book isn't purely about sourdough breads, and has recipes split into the following categories:

• Relatively quick breads with traditional yeast which you prepare and bake in a matter of an hour or two.
• Longer-fermentation breads with traditional yeasts which you let ferment over night before baking.
• Hybrid breads with both traditional yeast and sourdough cultures.
• Sourdough-only breads (and pizzas too).

The pure sourdough breads are the most involved and take just a bit of time and effort to learn, but Ken's system for baking sourdough is flexible and can work around your schedule.

Field Blend #2 is a hybrid bread containing both traditional yeast and sourdough cultures. It's truly fantastic for pretty much anything: sandwiches, spreading various nut butters or cheeses on a slice or two, dipping, etc. Like Ken recommends, I bake this one in a cast iron dutch oven, but because I prefer to make sandwiches, I use a rectangular one rather than a round one.

The main problem with sourdough breads, of course, is getting/creating the sourdough starter and then maintaining it. A starter is something you literally have to feed on a regular basis. If you're looking to create your own sourdough starter, Ken's book will guide you through the process. Your ability to make a good sourdough culture depends on the flour and water you use and the quality of the air where you're doing it. Some people have trouble getting a good starter going because their flour-water mixtures get overtaken by "bad bugs" before the good ones do. If you find that to be the case for you, a really good solution that has worked well for me multiple times is the pineapple juice method, which replaces water with pineapple juice in the starter's first few days. Sounds weird, but it works.

You can also buy dehydrated sourdough cultures which you can bring back to life with some water and flour. These can work very well and yield a strong starter that's ready to use within a couple of days. Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds sells high-quality starters, I've used both the Old World Sourdough Starter and Ms. Debbie's Rye Starter to great success.

For Dessert: Cornbread

I was debating whether this one belongs here or in a separate article about pastries. While cornbread is technically a quick bread (a "batter bread" where the amount of liquid is substantially higher than in regular breads), it's not what you usually think of when you hear the word "bread".

Cornbread is a staple food in North America and used to be one of the main foods of the so-called cowboys (Max Miller's video on the subject is very interesting, as is his YouTube channel in general). It's mostly used as a side dish, often together with beans.

These days, cornbread is a common ingredient in American BBQ joints and certain diners as a kind of dessert. It either comes as a rectangular slice like you would cut from a chocolate cake, or in cupcake form.

Baking cornbread is quick and easy, and it's very tasty. It's versatile, you can make it as sweet as you like, you can combine other ingredients and make it a bit spicy too (Jalapeño peppers are commonly used). The bread is often baked in a cast iron pan in an oven, I also have a cast iron cupcake pan so I rotate between the two.

My favorite cornbread recipe is this recipe by Jesse Sheehan. It uses buttermilk and olive oil, is very easy to make, and is absolutely delicious. You can't go wrong with this one, and this uses regular (coarse) cornmeal, you don't need the nixtamalized Masa Harina.

Summarized version for posterity:

1. Preheat oven to 190℃.
2. Grease a 12x12 centimeter cast iron pan with non-stick cooking spray or softened butter and let heat inside the oven.
3. Combine dry ingredients in a medium bowl:
   • ½ cup all-purpose flour
   • ½ cup coarsely ground cornmeal
   • 1 tsp baking powder
   • 1 pinch baking soda
   • ½ tsp salt
   • ¼ cup light brown sugar (In Israel, סוכר דמררה)
4. Combine wet ingredients in a small bowl:
   • ½ cup buttermilk (In Israel, רוויון)
   • ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
   • 1 medium egg
5. Gently combine the wet and dry ingredients, no need to go crazy.
6. Transfer the batter to the heated pan and bake for about 25 minutes, rotating the pan after 12.
7. Cool briefly and serve warm.