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There are nowhere near enough words to describe the love I have for this bread. When I first made it, I was genuinely shocked (and frankly pretty upset) with how good it was. For the little effort it requires, WHERE HAS THIS BREAD BEEN ALL MY LIFE? This recipe is incredibly easy and all made by hand – it just requires a little time & patience.

And since that day, this bread has been a staple in my household – to the point where I will not buy sandwich bread anymore, because why would I pay more for something that taste so much worse? The bread is soft, yeasty, buttery, and (when toasted) the crust shatters to almost taste like a croissant. The crust is so good I actually WANT the butt pieces. It is almost like a brioche, but dare I say better, as it is the perfect everyday bread. And I do eat this every day.

The base recipe makes two loaves, which I recommend having one fresh, and one sliced & frozen, ready to pop in the toaster. Fresh and in a bread bag, the loaf will last around a week before getting too stale. I eat this bread every morning with butter, jam, and scrambled eggs (which I highly recommend), but eat with good butter, use for sandwiches, toast of any kind, french toast, etc.

I learned this recipe in Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Bread Bible, which is a fantastic resource for all things bread. Rose perfectly breaks down bread making techniques and walks you through how to customize any recipe to be your own – it is a staple in my kitchen and I highly recommend to anyone interested in bread making.

To make things easy, the below recipe will be the by hand version. To do this in the stand mixer, just add 35g (1/4 C) flour to dry mix and adjust the kneading section as follows: when mixing, initially only add butter to the bowl. Using a dough hook, mix on low until a rough dough forms, and cover 20 minutes. Add salt and mix on medium 7-10 minutes. Follow the rest of instructions as written.

The ingredients are incredibly straight forward: all-purpose flour, water, honey, yeast, milk, and butter. In this recipe, we are using milk powder, but if you can’t find it/can’t bother, replace 1 C of water with 1 C of scalded milk (milk that is brought to boiling and then cooled back down). For the best flavor, use a high quality flour. I like King Arthur.

The process is also very easy – but for ultimate flavor (which I always do) start the night before. What separates good bread (because all bread is good) from great bread, is the starter. And I don’t just mean sourdough. Having a starter, that is, some of the ingredients pre-mixed and then fermented for flavor development, is what makes great bread have that extra something special. It is what makes the bread flavor linger in your mouth after eating. In this case, our starter is a sponge.

The sponge is flour, yeast, honey, & water mixed together until smooth. We then top the sponge with a beautiful dry-mix hat and let it ferment. If you are in a rush, ferment at room temp for a few hours, but I recommend making the sponge and his little hat the night before, letting it sit a room temp for 1 hour before it goes to the fridge to slowly build flavor overnight.

The last note, and one on most of my baking recipes – I have the below recipe in grams/weight and I HIGHLY encourage you to weigh your ingredients!! It is far more accurate – did you know there is not even a standard “cup”? So there really is no way to know you have the proper amount of whatever ingredient without the weight. This is especially important in baking where just a few dozen grams in the wrong direction could have a big impact. Here is the scale I use.