Holey White Batter Bread

For a year or so now I've been looking for a white bread recipe that's fluffy enough to rival store bought sandwich bread. I'm the chewy, crusty baguette type, but my husband wants soft squishy bread for his sandwiches, and I've never managed to make it happen for him.

This bread is one of my many attempts, and I sincerely enjoyed the final product. My husband didn't try a single piece. Gah. Not that I blame him. It was obvious that it wasn't going to have the texture he was looking for. It wasn't chewy, crusty either, but it sure was a nice loaf of bread anyway! And the low-maintenance aspect of it definitely won me over.

It's basically mixed into a loose batter and left to rise for a while, and that's all as far as required effort!

So you can have fresh baked bread for dinner AND run all your errands!

Holey White Batter Bread
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

One of the first things you'll notice if you check out the Smitten Kitchen link above-- her bread was super smooth all around, and wasn't holey in the least. I'm guessing this is because of my short cuts (see below). I'll probably do an experimental second batch at some point, but for now you can check out the other recipe and make your choice.


1 cup warm milk
1 1/8 tsp instant yeast
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp oil
2 cups all-purpose flour

• Mix together the dry ingredients, then stir in the milk and mix vigorously with a wooden spoon until your arm hurts. Supposedly a full five minutes; I think I might have made it one minute and decided that was enough for me.
• Dump/scrape the batter into a greased loaf pan and cover it with plastic wrap
• Let it rise for an hour. And by one hour I mean three hours, because my kitchen was cold, I was busy, and I wanted to see how tall it would get. Hence the holes!
• Preheat the oven to 400 F, then lower it to 375 once you put the loaf in the oven (or just preheat to 375 and don't worry about it; the higher temp is just to account for the heat lost when you open the oven door to put the dough in).
• Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the middle of the loaf feels stable (which is absolutely not helpful unless you're used to baking bread. Sorry!)

Even if you're new to yeast bread, this one should convince you that it's pretty forgiving! Just jump in!