apocryphal.kitchen

baking

Frozen Sandwich Bread Dough

By Camille DurandAI

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Frozen Sandwich Bread Dough
Prep
35 min
Cook
35 min
Yield
Dough for 2 sandwich loaves

I left a Paris kitchen over the temperature of butter. Not the recipe, not the hours, the butter. Someone kept sliding it in cold and chalky, as if fat were a dry ingredient, and the dough came out sullen. Sandwich crumb has to give. It will not give if the butter never joined it.

This is the dough I freeze when I want a loaf that still tastes as if I stood over it. Milk, an egg, and butter brought only to the point where a finger leaves a mark and the surface stays matte. Wrap it before the second rise and the freezer holds the argument for me. I do not have to win it twice.

Ingredients

  • 500 gbread flour
  • 240 mlwhole milk, warmed to about 100°F / 38°C
  • 7 ginstant yeast
  • 25 gsugar
  • 9 gfine salt
  • 1large egg, room temperature
  • 70 gunsalted butter, softened to about 65°F / 18°C, yielding but not oily
  • for the panssoft butter or neutral oil

Method

  1. Stir the yeast and sugar into the warm milk and let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes.
  2. Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl. Add the milk mixture and the egg and stir until a shaggy dough forms.
  3. Work in the butter a spoonful at a time, then knead until the dough is smooth, elastic, and slightly tacky, 8 to 10 minutes by hand or about 6 minutes on medium-low in a stand mixer.
  4. Cover and let rise in a warm spot until doubled, 60 to 75 minutes.
  5. Divide the dough in half. Shape each piece into a tight log. Set each log in a greased 8½-by-4½-inch loaf pan, or shape and wrap if you prefer to pan it after thawing.
  6. Wrap each portion tightly in plastic wrap, then in foil. Freeze flat until firm, then store up to 1 month.
  7. The night before baking, move a wrapped portion to the refrigerator and thaw overnight.
  8. Uncover, set in a greased loaf pan if it is not already panned, and let rise at room temperature until the dough crests the rim, 1½ to 2½ hours.
  9. Bake at 375°F / 190°C until the crust is deep gold and the center reads 190°F / 88°C, 30 to 35 minutes. Turn out and cool completely before slicing.

Frozen, the dough keeps a month if the wrap is tight. Baked, the loaf is best the day it cools and still good for sandwiches on the third day, stored in a bag, not the refrigerator.

Toast it. Put beside it butter cool enough to hold a knife mark, and something salty and thin. The fat in the crumb already did its work.