Question: I read your recipe for sourdough sandwich bread, but I want to make something faster. What about the new 5-minute recipes?
Answer: I like the 5-minute recipes for some things, but I don’t think they’re a single solution to all my bread needs. (The 5-minute recipes call for stirring a very wet dough together, letting it rise for several hours, and then chilling it for several hours to several days before shaping and baking it. You never have to knead the dough, and its flavor develops slowly as it chills.) I find them better for what I think of as supper breads — rustic loaves with an open crumb (that is, very holey inside) and a great crust. They also work well for pita and lavash. I’ve used them for pizza, but have other recipes I like better. For sandwich breads, so far I’ve found the loaves a little lean and a little hard to shape, though I may experiment with them some more. Meanwhile, here’s the recipe for a very basic sandwich bread that I always used until I came across the sourdough version.