The Best Sourdough Sandwich Bread

The best sourdough sandwich bread is made up of only a few ingredients but makes the best eggs on toast you’ve ever had in your life. Start your dough in the morning and have it baked in the evening, all without a stand mixer.

My family loves bread. We cherish sandwiches, French toast, breadcrumbs, and just butter vehicles in general. When I started working with sourdough, I decided I needed to supply our house with homemade bread. I could no longer tolerate all the long-winded ingredient lists on the back of the bread bags from the store.

I set out to find a sandwich loaf recipe that was soft and slightly sweet but still had some structure to hold together a perfectly melty grilled cheese. A few recipes served us well, but for this post, I wanted to really perfect mine to give to you.

What actually makes the perfect sourdough sandwich bread?

As you can see by my many iterations, I was striving for perfection. Each time the recipe was tweaked just a little to try to make it better, and each time it was less than what I would deem as the perfect specimen. It was either too soft or not soft enough. First it would have too many air bubbles in the crust and then it would have a dense bottom.

Finally after weeks of trial and error, I was swimming in leftover bread pieces and nearing the end of my desire to ever bake bread again. That’s when my loaf came out looking like this:

There obviously was a problem with fermentation and proofing because it burst at the seams! That’s when it dawned on me. Maybe it’ll never be perfect. I hadn’t seen a “perfect” loaf yet, but I did see delicious bread that actually served the role of holding together a sandwich quite well. More importantly, my family loved eating it, and that makes it the best recipe to me.

I’m not sure I’ll ever have bakery perfect bread every time, but I do know that no matter how imperfect the bake, the end result will always be healthier and more delicious than store bought. This tried and true recipe is for the person who doesn’t have a stand mixer, but wants to supply their pantry with homemade bread made from simple ingredients.

THIS POST CONTAINS AFFILIATE LINKS WHICH MEANS I MAKE A SMALL COMMISSION AT NO EXTRA COST TO YOU. SEE MY FULL DISCLOSURE HERE.

Tools you’ll want to have

Bread loaf pan

Food scale

Bread bags

Instant read thermometer

Example baking timeline

• 9:30pm the night before feed starter a 1-1 ratio of flour and water.
• 8:30am the next day mix flour, milk, and starter for autolyse
• 10:30am mix honey, salt, and water into dough
• 10:40am knead butter into dough one pat at a time
• 10:50am slap and fold dough to build gluten strength
• 11:00am cover with plastic wrap or damp kitchen towel for bulk fermentation
• 11:30am stretch and fold #1
• 12:00pm stretch and fold #2
• 12:30pm stretch and fold #3
• {If you skipped the slap and fold, this is where you’ll add another 3 sets of stretch and folds or until your dough passes the window pane test.}
• 3:30pm punch down, turn out onto clean work surface, shape and place into bread tin
• 5:30pm bake at 375F (190C) for 45 minutes

Tips for making sourdough sandwich bread

Any good baking endeavor involves weighing your ingredients. Start by adding 430g of bread flour and 50g of whole wheat into your bowl. The bread flour gives the loaf structure while the little bit of whole wheat adds just a touch of that bread flavor that you want from a homemade slice.

Use your starter when it is bubbly and active. Once it’s been fed and maturing for about 12 hours or overnight, it should have doubled in size and will be in perfect condition to use in your bread.

I like to weigh the milk in a small saucepot before placing on the stove to heat to between 90F and 100F.

Add the warm milk and stir with a fork or a dough whisk until combined into a shaggy yet cohesive dough.

Autolyse

Flour and liquid have this magical property that, when combined, will form strength and elasticity simply by sitting in a bowl together. This is what we call autolyse. It’s the process that gets the gluten network started before we ever touch the dough to knead. For sourdough sandwich bread this can take 30 minutes to 2 hours depending on the temperature of your kitchen and your schedule. I tend to mix everything together and come back to it when I have time and remember which is usually around an hour later.

After the autolyse, it’s time to add the rest of the ingredients. I save the butter for last so that I can knead it in at the end. I’ve found that doing this creates a softer, creamier crumb after it’s been baked.

Bulk fermentation

Incorporate the honey, salt, and 10g of water into the dough before adding the butter. However you manage to get everything fully incorporated will work. I like to use a bit of a pinch, knead method. I pinch all the ingredients into the dough when they are first added, and I knead a little in the bowl once everything has been pinched together.

Pull and fold the dough over itself to help get the most of your kneading. At this point, you cannot overmix the dough, so it’s better to err on the side of kneading for too long. I go until the dough becomes more homogenous or my hands are too tired to continue.

Add butter

Now it’s time to add the butter. I place each pat of room temperature butter on the top and fold it into the rest of the dough as shown below.

Repeat until each pat of butter is fully incorporated. When you’re done you should have a dough that looks similar to this:

Slap and fold

Optional: At this point, you can cover with plastic wrap or a damp kitchen towel and start bulk fermentation. However, to build even more gluten, I like to spend a few minutes doing the slap and fold technique on a clean work surface. This is literally taking the dough and folding it over itself after you’ve slapped it down on the counter. Grabbing it from the top third, lift and then slap down. Fold the dough back onto itself and repeat the process for 5-10 minutes. If you need a video to watch, here’s a good one.

After it’s had even more gluten development through slapping and folding, it should look something like this:

Bulk fermentation

Bulk fermentation begins after we have all ingredients added to dough. This is also when we apply the final method to build gluten strength in doing three gentle stretch and folds every thirty minutes. The following pictures show you step by step how to perform a stretch and fold.

After lifting up a portion of the dough and stretching vertically, fold it onto itself.

Turn the bowl 90 degrees, and repeat the process four times covering the circumference of the dough ball.

After a full stretch and fold, flip the dough over to form a taut ball, and let it rest.

After the third and final stretch and fold, it should pass the window pane test. Check out this post for more information on that.

And after resting for 3-4 hours, it should have doubled in size.

Punch down the dough to release gas. This helps keep bigger bubbles from forming between the crust and the crumb inside the oven.

Butter the inside of a bread loaf tin and roll out your dough to form a rectangle that is just a bit wider than the width of your pan.

Fold the dough over itself like an envelope and then roll it onto itself starting from the side furthest from you. With each roll, use your thumbs to create a tight outer edge.

When you’re done, you’ll have your bread loaf shape. Place into the tin, and cover with a dry towel to rise one last time before baking. Depending on the temperature of your kitchen this will be anywhere between 1 and 3 hours for the dough to rise just above the top edge of the tin.

Bake your sourdough sandwich bread

Bake at 375F for 45 minutes, and let it cool for at least an hour before slicing.

And just like that, you have a beautiful sourdough sandwich bread that is perfect for deli meats, grilled cheese, pb&j, or just butter and salt.