Super Soft Fresh Milled Sandwich Bread

This Super Soft Fresh Milled Sandwich Bread is so luxuriously fluffy, you’ll feel like you are biting into a cloud!

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Ingredients For Super Soft Fresh Milled Sandwich Bread

Fresh milled hard white wheat flour– It’s important to use a hard wheat for yeast doughs, and hard white wheat creates the perfect light and fluffy product. My two favorite places to source high quality grains from are Azure Standard and Ancient Grains.

Lukewarm water– You don’t want the water to be too warm, as this can kill your yeast or over-ferment your dough.

Olive oil– Oil in bread dough lubricates the gluten strands, making dough easier to handle. It also makes the dough softer, more flavorful, and improves shelf life.

Honey– Other than the many health benefits of honey, it retains moisture in bread dough, and adds flavor and color. One of the cool things about honey is that it is also a natural preservative.

Eggs– They make your bread light and fluffy. Eggs are an emulsifier, which means that they bind fats and liquids together. This makes a smoother dough. They also improve texture, add moisture, and extend shelf life.

Instant yeast– Instant yeast doesn’t require activation and proofing like traditional yeast.

Salt– Ahh salt. Such a tiny and mighty ingredient! I forgot salt in a batch of bread the other day. Though it looks beautiful, the appearance is definitely deceiving! It is blah, the blandest batch of bread you ever sunk your teeth into. Salt is a regulator. It slows down the growth and reproduction of yeast, which is great because you don’t want to overferment your dough, but it can dehydrate the yeast cells and inhibit their development.

What Happens When We Make Fresh Milled Bread?

God created delicious food sources that would allow us to get the vitamins and nutrients our bodies need to function properly. A simple loaf of bread contains so much science and is a mini miracle in itself!

The main difference between sourdough and yeast is that yeast is a single strain cultured bacteria, while sourdough starter is a fermented mixture of flour and water containing a wild yeast and bacteria. As the leaven, whether sourdough or yeast, spreads through the dough, it feeds on the starch and sugars found in the flour and added sweeteners. When the yeast culture consumes sugars and starches, it releases carbon dioxide and alcohol, both by-products of fermentation.

Two proteins found in flour, called gliadin and glutenin, form what we call gluten. They are alined and developed when brought in contact with liquid, and mixed or kneaded. Gliadin makes the dough stretchy, and glutenin provides the snap back, or elasticity. This creates a whole network, so as the yeast feeds, ferments and releases carbon dioxide, the gluten proteins trap the gas, creating bubbles in the dough.

If you read “Why choose fresh milled flour?”, then you learned what happens when oxygen comes in contact with the nutrients found in fresh milled wheat. It is oxidized, which basically means that nutrition deteriorates when oxygen comes in contact with the flour.

This is the part that blows my mind! Carbon dioxide, which is released through fermentation, is then trapped by the gluten proteins, which prevents oxygen from coming in contact with the valuable vitamins and nutrients in our bread dough! Not only did God create grain with such a high nutritional value, but He designed it in such a way that those same nutrients can be protected and preserved through the process of making bread!

Tools You’ll Need

Grain mill- I use the Komo Fidibus Classic Mill, but there are a lot of other great options available depend on what you are looking for.

Bread pans– This recipe makes three 1.5 pound loaves of bread. I use 9″x5″ glass Anchor Hocking loaf pans.

Digital scales– This is a very important tool when you are working with fresh milled flour, and will allow you to achieve much more consistent results. It also takes the guess work out of trying to figure out how many wheat berries to mill.

Mixer- I mean… if you want to give it a shot by hand, be my guest! It takes much longer to develop the gluten in fresh milled flour than white flour, which means that it takes more kneading to get the right consistency. My Bosch mixer will win no prizes for the most aesthetically pleasing kitchen tool, but it is a workhorse.

If you are new to the baking world, bread may seem like a daunting process to tackle! For me, some days my bread just turns out better than others. It naturally varies a little because of the atmosphere (or whether or not I remember the salt, lol). Temperature, humidity, and air pressure all factor in. But with a bit of practice, it’s definitely possible to have consistent, delicious results!

Not only does this recipe make incredible fresh milled sandwich bread, but you can also use it for hamburger or hotdog buns and many other things!

Best wishes, and I hope you and your family love this Super Soft Fresh Milled Sandwich Bread!

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