Cold-proofed White Bread? Count Me In

I know it’s been a few months since my last bread post. There’s been a bit of a rough patch at my house. First, we all caught stomach flu, bad stomach flu. At one point, I got so dehydrated that I needed an IV to get functioning again. Not fun.

Then, we caught Covid. (We’ve had a few illnesses this year that I thought might have been Covid. At one point, I lost my sense of taste and smell and that was a wild experience, but it wasn’t Covid.) My family has their Covid vaccines, so thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. However, it still knocked our entire household on our butts for a solid two weeks. I still have a lingering cough that doesn’t want to go away.

Third, we sent Lily with a mask back to school for about a week. We hoped that we were in the clear. But nope. She came back with another cough that soon turned into congestion that led to me and my husband catching another round of the sniffles. And this recovery and illness pattern has repeated for months.

Despite all that, I did manage to make this cold-proofed white bread.

Persistence Pays Off

This recipe took me a surprising amount of time to get just right. I thought for a bit that I had enough experience as a bread maker that coming up with a new recipe would be easy peasy. It wasn’t.

With my daughter’s kindergarten class scheduled in the middle of the day, I had to get creative with my bread baking timing and schedule to work around it. I ended up waiting until the weekend to work on the recipe, and every time I failed, I had to wait another week before I could try again.

But all my trial and error and experimentation resulted in a beautiful loaf with a perfectly open crumb and blistered crust. And because it proofed in the fridge, I could ensure consistent fermentation again and again.

If you want to make my naturally leavened cold-proofed white bread, check out the recipe on my bread blog, Breadbythehour.com

Did You Try It?

I love it when my friends and family try my latest bread recipes. If you tried my cold-proofed white bread, let me know what you think. Feel free to leave a star rating or a review. Have suggestions for improvement? Give me pointers in the comment section below. Your feedback makes good recipes even better, and it makes my day.