We usually eat sourdough bread with a strong crust, and when my son asked for a soft bread that would work well as sandwiches, I was glad to find this recipe (from a skilled Fresh Loaf baker – thank you to txfarmer) which unusually uses milk and eggs with a sourdough starter. The recipe is doubled and adapted slightly to use the whites from three medium eggs. The bread turned out to be delicious, with some acidity alongside the sweetness of fortified dough, and it also keeps well, thanks to the sourdough.

Ingredients

Levain
26g mature starter
44g milk
80g bread flour
Mix, leave at room temperature for 12 hours

Final dough
All of the levain
210g milk, lukewarm
50g butter, softened
50g sugar
110g egg whites (for me, this took 3 medium eggs)
6g salt
250g bread flour
150g AP flour

Method

Work the dough until it nearly gives a 'windowpane' effect when stretched. For me, this was about 15 minutes.

Leave to rise for 2 hours, fold, rest overnight.
Divide, rest for 1 hour, form loaves in greased loaf tins
(2 roughly 10-inch long tins, for example)
Leave to rise for 6 hours, score the tops
Bake at 175C/350F/gas mark 4 for 45 minutes