I need to start this post with a disclaimer. You see, I, like yourself, try very hard to extol the virtues of whole wheat living on my family (peppered with the occasional "do as I say, not as I do", because, well, I've been waiting my whole life to say that!). I do like it, and my kids come around to it in fits and spurts, which I can live with.
But...
I have those days (and my kids most definitely have them too) where nothings going to be better than white bread and butter. Nothing else will do, honestly...nothing. It will immediately take me back to being a kid, when biscuits were made with every meal. Biscuits aside (we've discussed those here before), we recently got a new bread machine after being without one for over 2 years. I will hold the final verdict on whether or not this machine is a winner. Bread loaf #1 was a too dense, undercooked, flattened pancake. Bleh... I knew I had to change up a few things for loaf #2. I needed to buy new yeast...and I needed to pull out our favorite bread recipe. No more of this let's follow the one in the instruction book business.
I put the ingredients in the machine, made a few adjustments to the settings, pushed go, and left to pick up the kids. "If we're lucky, when we walk in the house its going to smell like fresh bread. If we're lucky."
We were lucky all right. The house smelled heavenly (actual sighs from us when we walked in). The loaf came out beautifully. Light, fluffy, perfect color and texture. I'm now fully convinced that I can't go wrong with this recipe, ever. I've made it for years and the only complaint I had using it in my old machine is that the loaf size was too big. Its a old James Beard recipe, given to me by my friend Sarah, who has no idea how much we love this bread.
Our recipe is for a bread machine, loaf size is a little over 2 lb.
Buttermilk White Bread
recipe from James Beard
Ingredients:
3 Tbsp. melted butter
1-1 1/4 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup warm water
3 1/2 cups unbleached white flour
1 Tbsp granulated sugar
1 Tbsp salt
2 packages dry yeast
(add all to the bread machine in the order it is written, set for Basic mode).
Standby with butter or homemade jam, ready to grab it when its ready.
