If you’re looking for a simple recipe for a tender sandwich bread—the kind of loaf that’d be great turned into a grilled cheese or crunchy croutons—this is it. This recipe from Bryan Ford is his Master Bread Dough, rolled into a tight log and baked until golden brown. We recommend slicing any bread you’re not going to eat and then freezing it in a resealable plastic bag or airtight container for instant toast. Even if you’re going to eat it later in the week, freezing it right away preserves the taste and texture.
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What you’ll need
Loaf Pan
$19 At Amazon
Pastry Brush
$6 At Amazon
Ingredients
Makes one 8½x4½" or 9x5" loaf
Preparation
Step 1
To make this recipe, start by preparing one batch of the Master Bread Dough.
Step 2
Liberally coat an 8½x4½" or 9x5" loaf pan with extra-virgin olive oil. Lightly flour work surface with bread flour and turn out Master Bread Dough onto surface. Roll dough over onto itself, applying pressure with your fingers to seal closed and tighten log. Use your fingers to roll ends of log against surface to close. (Click here to see Bryan's motions.) Place dough in pan and brush with more extra-virgin olive oil. Cover with a kitchen towel and let dough rise until about ½" above edge of pan, about 2 hours.
Step 3
Preheat oven to 425°. Sprinkle top liberally with flaky sea salt. Bake until golden brown, 35–40 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let cook in pan 5 minutes. Turn out bread onto rack and let cool completely before slicing.
Step 4
Do ahead: Bread can be baked 3 days ahead. Store in a paper bag or a bread box at room temperature, or slice and freeze up to 1 month.
Leave a Review
Reviews (29)
Back to TopOne of the comments complained that mixing for the amount of time in the recipe overkneaded the dough. This is very unlikely. You're not going to overwork the dough with 5 minutes of mixing in a home stand mixer. If the bread didn't rise, there was some other reason. Still, you shouldn't mix based on time; you need to learn to use the windowpane test to discover when the gluten in the dough has been fully developed. That's going to take more than 2-3 minutes on low speed. Also, I'm baffled by the leftover poolish question. Use it all!
Greg Esres
1/9/2022
Excellent recipe ... However, be cautious with the stand mixer. Twice my mixer has over kneaded my dough when following the timing on the recipe, resulting in a firm and tight dough that struggled pretty epically with rising. I find that my dough comes together in 2-3 minutes top at low speed. Also, i used all purpose flour the first time and it came out great! Using bread flour now and excited to see if there's a difference. Overall, the bread tastes delicious even if my dough did not rise much ... but it's the holidays and no one has a problem with some extra salted butter on some dense-ass toasty bread in the morning after an obscene amount of cocktails and cheer. Good luck!
Anonymous
Portland Oregon
12/18/2021
I've made this loaf a lot. I love it. Sometimes I take out 100g of bread flour and add 100g of whole wheat, or white whole wheat flour just to change it up.
Darvoid
Gray, Maine
9/12/2021
I LOVE this bread. I used the remaining Poolish to make a second loaf - glad I did because my family devoured the first one within a few hours. I would cut the poolish ingredients in half if I only wanted 1 loaf, or I’ve read that others refrigerate the remainder and use another day.
Viktorya
San Francisco, CA
12/16/2020
This bread was delicious, just what I like although I overdid the external olive oil on the first try. Since I was reluctant just to throw away the unused poolish, I made a second loaf from it several days later and it worked just fine. Now I'm dividing the poolish in half, and keeping the second half covered in the fridge until I'm ready.
Anonymous
Los Angeles, CA
11/18/2020
I I agree with other comments, that this is confusing because this is only the baking instructions for a recipe from a separate post. I don’t know what the point is in doing this, it seems to make absolutely no sense at all unless the entire point of this was for Bon Appetite to entirely confuse its readers, then it succeeded spectacularly. That being said, if you do go the the Master Bread Recipe by clicking on the link in step 1, the. You will be very happy with the results. It’s a lovely bread with a moist and soft crumb and a crunchy crust. It is a great bread once you get past the stupidity of separating the baking instructions and actual recipe.
Babs
Chicago
11/15/2020
This didn't turn out so well for me. Not sure what went wrong, but my loaf ended up dense and just ok in flavor. I made over the course of 2 chilly California days, so had to prove longer than instructed. Not sure I will try this one again or look for another recipe. Also a bit annoyed with left over poolish and lack of better instructions or video BA typically provides.
Karen
Granite Bay, CA
11/13/2020
Please tell what to do with the leftover poolish.. It's a lot to waste if there's no way to save and use it. Or why not just reduce the amount to produce the 100 grams needed to make the bread?
Anonymous
new york
11/1/2020
Whassup? Only ingredients listed, no instructions I have the Master Bread Dough ready to use and want to proceed! Please reply asap! Thanks!
West Chester PA
10/31/2020
The crumb was lovely, soft, yet sturdy. An excellent sandwich medium. I made mine with whole grain bread flour and whole wheat flour so it came out a little denser and didn't quite get the same rise as stated in the recipe, but I used all the poolish from the Master Recipe to make two beautiful loaves. My BLTs thank you.
Ottawa
10/18/2020
Do you have print friendly version of this recipe?
Anonymous
Canada
10/15/2020
@Garvan: My apologies—we were having some technical difficulties earlier this morning. I hope it works for you now!! The reason there are no quantities is because this recipe starts off with a 1x batch of Bryan's Master Dough, which is linked in the headnote, ingredient list, and step 1 of the recipe.
Sarah Jampel
10/14/2020
The recipe is blank, just as reported by Anonymous below. I can see the ingredients, and there is nothing under RECIPE PREPARATION. This is a web page fault. I am using Google Chrome browser and Windows 10.
Garvan
10/14/2020
Also, a Pullman Loaf is necessarily required to be cooked in a lidded bread pan, which would give the loaf a rectangular cuboid shape (i.e. all sides, including the top, would be flat). Pullman Loafs are named after the Pullman railway cars, and were supposed to have conserved space for storage. Odd they wouldn't mention that here.
gabri
Bend, OR
10/12/2020
@ janine sylvestre and Anonymous saying it's an empty recipe Did both of you miss this at the beginning? "To make this recipe, start by preparing one batch of the Master Bread Dough."
andyhp84
Burbank, CA.
10/12/2020