I'm on a quest to find the perfect sandwich bread.

My kids love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I do too. We use a lot of bread. Bread is expensive. So, I've been searching for the perfect sandwich bread recipe on Pinterest. I have tried a few and am in the process of trying another recipe.

The first bread recipe I tried was from Budget Bytes; a blogger I follow through Facebook posted the recipe saying she wanted to make it. It was her raisin spice bread. It was good, and it was very easy to make, so I thought I could start trying more recipes and possibly find one to make sandwiches from so I don't have to pay $4 for a loaf of bread at the grocery store.

A couple of weeks later, I tried Budget Bytes' honey wheat sandwich bread. It tasted good, and my children and husband devoured it, but it was dense and heavy and nothing like what I would think of as sandwich bread. Maybe I did something wrong, but it just didn't work for me.

I searched Pinterest for sandwich bread recipes and found a King Arthur Flour recipe for their Classic Sandwich Bread. I repinned it (of course!) and then I made it. For the first loaf, I subbed one cup of whole wheat flour for one of the three cups of all purpose flour. I took a few photos of that bread and the process of making it with the intention of blogging about it if it turned out well. I had high hopes. See?

It didn't rise as high as I had hoped and was denser than I wanted, but it was pretty.  After making that one, I decided to immediately make a completely white loaf from the same King Arthur recipe. I took pictures of that one too, but not after it was finished baking because my husband got home from work as I took it out of the oven and its pretty self got destroyed by my family. Take my word--it was pretty! It rose up better than the wheat loaf. It was fluffier and tasted better, too. The problem was that it was a bit too moist in the center, even though it was done. I also didn't like that the crust was hard. I don't know why the crust is always hard and tough, but if you have an idea of how to prevent that, let me know. When the crust is tough, it makes slicing the bread tough.

Here is the dough ball from the white loaf.

Again, take my word for it--the white bread rose up nicely and tasted great--especially with some butter and strawberry jam!

This morning I searched Pinterest for "soft sandwich bread" and found and repinned this recipe for Kitchen Simplicity's Soft Honey-Wheat Sandwich Bread. I've got the sponge part rising now and will finish it up soon and will let y'all know how it turns out. Here's what it's looking like so far.

 

I was thinking this was a huge ball of dough and I must have screwed up. Turns out, it pays to read a recipe all the way through before beginning. I know, I know. I'm lazy sometimes. This recipe is for three loaves of bread! Yikes. I hope it's good. Also, I've only got two loaf pans. Maybe I can freeze the third?

I ran out of bowls. This will have to work.