The #1 Expert Tip To Upgrade A Basic White Bread Recipe

White bread has its place in the culinary world, but it can be a little bland — some might say stale. But it's time to think of white bread as a blank slate ready to be improved. Chowhound tapped Nathan Myhrvold to help us upgrade the basic white bread recipe. He's the founder of Modernist Cuisine and lead author of the Modernist Cuisine cookbook series. Myhrvold says, "Mix-in ingredients, also called inclusions, are a fantastic way to make white sandwich bread more interesting."

The list of potential mix-in ingredients runs the gamut from savory to sweet. Myhrvold mentions nuts, vegetables, and even cured meats and cheeses on the savory side. For something sweeter, he suggests adding fruits, purees, or jams, all of which would work well with a trendy Japanese-style whipped cream sandwich. You can play with the bread's texture through other inclusions, such as toasted wheat bran and germ. 

Experimentation is the name of the game here. In Modernist Cuisine's latest cookbook, "Modernist Bread at Home," Nathan Myhrvold and his team pushed the envelope with recipes for sweet potato, apple pie, and artichoke sandwich breads. He even suggests pureeing canned fruits or vegetables and mixing them into the dough. On the less experimental side, cinnamon raisin or olive bread also falls into the white-breads-with-inclusions category. As for texture, Myhrvold mentions he adds hydrated, toasted bran and germ to his whole wheat bread as inclusions. The resulting loaf is less dense than traditional whole wheat bread but still includes the whole grain.

One of Myhrvold's favorite techniques to further boost flavor involves pressure caramelizing ingredients such as nuts, grains, or dried fruits using sugar, butter, and baking soda in an Instant Pot or pressure cooker. The team also likes to play with different flours for taste and texture, such as "a Japanese sandwich bread, which includes rice flour in the dough and [...] topped with furikake," Myhrvold says. But, figuring out how to add these inclusions correctly into a white bread recipe — and how much to add — isn't as simple as just plopping them in the dough. There are a few concepts to consider.

Using various inclusions in a white bread recipe obviously requires different adjustments. "Certain inclusions, like liquids or purees, will become an integral part of the dough's foundation," Nathan Myhrvold says. So, you can take a can of your favorite fruit or vegetables and mix it right in with the dough. But, in these cases, you'll have to adjust the amount of flour and hydration to get the dough to the desired consistency.  

Generally, adding ingredients in small chunks will not affect the integrity of the dough. But, Myhrvold warns, "A walnut half might be too large to remain suspended within the dough, which is why we recommend chopping larger ingredients. Other types of additions, like swirls or chunks, will coexist within the dough," Myhrvold says. Now that you've upgraded your white bread recipe, you can use it to upgrade your boring tuna sandwich or take your tomato sandwich to the next level.