When my children were little and taking their lunches to school everyday Publix sold a loaf of bread called Rainbow Bread. It was so much fun to make sandwiches on these colorful loaves and send them each day for a bright surprise when they opened their Dora, Transformer, Barbie, or Spiderman lunch boxes!
Unfortunately, Publix no longer sells this bread so I decided to go on a journey of my own and see if I could recreate it. Turns out, it is very simple and just requires a basic bread recipe and some food coloring. Here’s my recipe and I hope your kids enjoy it as much as mine!
PS: this is my basic white bread recipe. You can make it without the food coloring if you prefer.
Makes 2 loaves of white bread using a Kitchenaid mixer.
½ cup of milk
3 scant tablespoons of white sugar
2 teaspoons of kosher salt
3 tablespoons of butter
2 packages of yeast
1 ½ cups of water, heated to 105-115 degrees
5-6 cups of all-purpose flour
White Loaves
Warm the milk, sugar, salt, and butter for about 1 minute in the microwave. Cool to lukewarm or 105-115 degrees.
Add the warm water to the mixing bowl and add the yeast. Stir to dissolve the yeast.
Add the milk mixture to the water/yeast, along with 4 ½ cups of the flour.
Using the dough hook, turn the mixer on speed 2 and mix for 1 minute. Add the remaining flour ¼ cup at a time and mix for about 2 minutes, or until the dough clings to the hook and cleans the sides of the bowl. Knead for 2 more minutes. The dough will be very sticky.
Place the dough in a large greased bowl (turn the dough around to grease all of it), cover, and allow to rise in a warm spot for about an hour. It will more than double in size.
*Punch the dough down, divide in half, shape each half into a loaf shape. Place each loaf into a greased loaf pan, cover, allow to rise again for about an hour.
Bake in a preheated 400-degree oven for 30 minutes, or until the internal temperature is 190 degrees.
*For Rainbow Loaves, do everything listed above through step 5, then do the following:
Punch the dough down and divide in half, as above, then divide each half into 4 equal pieces (1 piece each for the colors of red, green, blue, and yellow).
Add each food coloring color to each of the 4 pieces and mix it in. Stack each colored piece of dough on top of one another in the greased loaf pan. Do the same thing with the other half of the dough.
Cover the colored loaves and allow them to rise about an hour.
Bake in a preheated 400-degree oven for 30 minutes, or until the internal temperature is 190 degrees.
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