Butter Bread Recipe: 4 Tips for Making Homemade Butter Bread

Butter bread is a wheat bread enriched by added quantities of butter in the recipe. Recipes for basic breads, sometimes known as lean breads, include flour, yeast, salt, and water. Enriched doughs, however, add some type of fat, such as butter, eggs, and milk.

Brioche is a common type of butter bread, but bakers from various cultures worldwide have their own versions. For example, butterzopf is a butter bread eaten for Sunday breakfast in parts of Switzerland. Dinner rolls are typically a form of butter bread, so are challah, French pain de mie, and German stollen.

The comparatively high volume of fat in this type of bread adds sweetness. The fat also makes the bread dough tender and shortens the strands of wheat gluten in the dough.

With the sponge method, you mix the yeast with some flour, sugar, and water to give the yeast mixture a head start on its fermentation process. This results in bread with a very complex flavor. The high-fat method of mixing asks you to knead the dough and let the dough's gluten develop to the windowpane stage (when light can pass through the dough) before adding the butter.

While most butter breads use white bread flour, you can choose whole wheat flour to add to the bread's nutritional value. All breads are high in carbohydrates and low in protein and cholesterol. Still, whole wheat flours add to your bread's dietary fiber count, and enriched flours may have nutritionally significant amounts of the daily value of riboflavin, folic acid, vitamin D, and niacin.

Here are a few tips that will help you make your homemade bread:

1. 1. Chill the dough: Most bread doughs should rise in a warm place, but for best results, the dough should do its initial rise in the refrigerator if you have the time for it. Since the fat of the butter weakens the gluten, enriched dough can be hard to shape at room temperature.
2. 2. Use a stand mixer: Knead with a stand mixer, using the dough hook. The extra fat in butter bread weakens the gluten, so kneading can take a long time.
3. 3. Plan for a slow rise: You should not try to rush enriched dough, so prepare for a slow rising time.
4. 4. Bake at a lower temperature: Enriched dough is dense, so it takes longer to bake than plain bread. Bake at 325—375 degrees Fahrenheit to fully bake the inside and avoid burning the crust.