The Perfect Bread Recipe

My name is Penny the Bread Killer. I've flopped so many loaves of bread over the course of my life and broken a bread knife in the process. I'd given up on making homemade bread for a while, sick of all the wasted food, when I finally got the hang of making delicious bread. But it was still lacking something and wasn't perfect.

In a last ditch attempt to find a great recipe that not only would taste good fresh from the oven, but would  also be fluffy and suitable for sandwiches, I asked the great ladies of Diaperswappers.com for help and ended up with the perfect recipe, that once tweaking, was absolutely divine, dirt cheap, chemical free and just totally terriffic. Calling for no specialty ingredients, this bread doesn't crumble and is fluffy and soft and is even able to bend without breaking, making it the perfect texture for sandwiches. It can also be soaked for those following a traditional foods diet who want to rid grains of phytic acid.
I usually pre-slice the bread and keep it in the freezer, pulling out pieces when necessary.

Perfect Bread

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups potato water (water in which potatoes were boiled)

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 cups white flour

1 tablespoon vinegar

1 tablespoon yeast

1/3 cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon oil

Instructions

1. If you want soaked grain bread, mix the first four ingredients and let sit overnight in a warm place.

2. If soaking grains, in the morning add the rest of the ingredients and mix. If soaking grains doesn't interest you, simply mix all the ingredients together.

3. Knead the dough for a nice while, as this forms gluten strands, allowing the gluten to do its magic.

4. Let the dough rise until doubled.

5. Line a large loaf pan with parchment paper and put the dough inside, allowing it to rise once more until doubled.

6. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and bake until the bread is a medium brown and sounds hollow when tapped.

7. Take out the bread with the parchment paper from the pan and let it cool fully.

8. Carefully peel off the parchment paper from the cooled loaf.

9. Slice the bread carefully with a bread knife, making uniform thin peices. This should be no trouble at all, thanks to this perfect recipe.

10. Bag and freeze or eat and enjoy.

Variations

• The original recipe calls for 2 3/4 cups of whole wheat flour and 1/4 cup vital wheat gluten. Alternatively, you can use 2 cups whole wheat flour and one cup high gluten white bread flour. Either of those will garner the same end results; I simply use what I do because I can't find either of these specialty ingredients where I live without paying through my nose.
• You can replace the sugar with 1/4 cup honey, increase it, or decrease it.
• You can replace the oil with butter, animal fat, coconut oil, or whatever your heart desires.
• Instead of using potato water, you can use regular water and then add 1/4 cup of potato flakes into the  mix or 1/4 cup of mashed plain boiled potatoes. Do not simply leave out, as the potato starch is what gives the bread its perfect texture.

Have you ever used any of the odd ingredients from this recipe while making bread? What do you do to make sure your bread is fluffy, soft, and non crumbly? Do you have a perfect bread recipe to share?

Linking to Vegetarian Foodie Friday, Fight Back Friday, Friday Foods, and Food on Fridays.