I love the look of a free form artisan loaf of bread, but I found it tedious to bake enough loaves in a home oven at one time to feed our crew. So I changed my recipe around to bake it in a loaf pan and create a Sourdough Sandwich Bread! This way I can bake 6 loaves of sourdough bread at once and it's a much more efficient use of my time!
Sourdough Sandwich Bread is a very customizable recipe to make your own. Swap some of the flour for whole wheat. Add in ½ cup of oats, or some seeds such as sunflower, sesame or flax! Add in raisins and cinnamon. As a guide, ½ cup of add-ins and you won't need to change the recipe. One cup of flour can be swapped out for whole wheat without needing to tweak anything either.
Sourdough Sandwich Bread
Ingredients
- ½ - ¾ cup sourdough starter if your starter is runny, add less, thick, add more
- 1 - 2 tablespoons honey or sugar more honey/sugar makes a softer bread. Double this if you want a soft soft bread!
- 1 ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons olive oil/fat of choice
- 1 - 1 ¼ cups water
- 3 - 3 ½ cups white flour
Instructions
Sourdough Sandwich Bread Dough
- Mix starter, honey, salt, oil and water together in a mixer or by hand. I love my Danish dough whisk for this!
- Add flour in until you have a kneadable consistency that either A.) The dough doesn't stick to side of mixer bowl or B.) Dough doesn't stick to your hands when you knead it.
- Knead it for a few minutes then cover with a damp towel and choose your path for first rise depending on your schedule and weather. Warmth speeds up sourdough, cold slows it. This is all on counter unless specified
Winter Rising
- Let the dough sit 12-18 hrs.
- Shape the dough and allow to rise a second time for 2-3hrs.
Alternative Winter Rising
- Let the dough sit 4-6 hrs.
- Shape the dough and put it in the fridge to rise a second time for 12-18hrs.
- Take out an hour before baking. Our laundry room is fridge-ish temp so we put them back there. Before baking when I use this method, I put bread pans in oven, turn oven on for 2 min then turn it off. Let sit in warm oven an hour, take out, then preheat oven for baking. This is my current favourite method.
Summer Rising
- Let the dough sit 6-8 hrs.
- Shape the dough and allow to rise a second time for 1-2 hrs.
Shaping Sourdough Sandwich Bread
- After your first rise, its time to shape! Dump your dough onto a floured surface.
- Press dough roughly into a 6x8inch rectangle, fold like a letter with long sides in, flip seam side down and let sit about 10 minutes. This is called a preshape/bench rest and makes your loaves taller!
Baking Sourdough Sandwich Bread
- Prep your loaf pan by lining with parchment or greasing the pan.
- After the bench rest, flip seam side up, press into rectangle again but this time roll it up, and tuck sides under to make a tidy loaf, then put into the loaf pan.
- Let rise for second rise depending on which path you choose.
- Preheat oven to 425F.
- Using your sharpest knife, slash the loaf by slicing a one inch deep line down the length of the bread. You can get artistic or just leave it at that. This allows the bread to expand and rise in the oven better.
- Put pan into oven and bake for 25 min, turn around and then bake 20 more.
- Remove bread from oven and put on a cooling rack. Remove from pan and let cool until around room temp. Its hard to wait but I promise its worth it! The bread is still finishing up baking as it cools.
Notes
- I make this in a x6 recipe cause it's our favourite and freezes well!
Nutrition
More Sourdough Recipes
Once you've mastered working with sourdough you'll find you're wondering what other recipes you can try with it now? Here are my tried & true favorite sourdough recipes!
Chadwick Grass Farms
This is our family bread recipe now! Thanks so much, Katie! It freezes perfectly and is a great texture. Also not a hard recipe. ?
Jennifer Lucas
I have been baking with sourdough for decades, and this recipe is a keeper! It is flexible and always works (no matter the state of my starter or how I ammend it). Perfect!
Tanya
If I were to make it a raisin loaf with the mentioned 1/2 c raisins and switch out for 1c fresh ground whole wheat would I need to make any alterations
[email protected]
No it should be just fine, but make sure you let it autolyze because of the fresh ground flour.
Samantha
I made this for the first time and I had to pull it out of the oven early (15 minutes) as it was getting very brown on top. This happened with another sourdough recipe too. Any suggestions? Should I lower the oven temperature? I am newbie to sourdough and bread baking! Thank you for any help!
Lisa Dana
I love this recipe. Thank you for sharing it. I finally feel as though I am getting the hang of making sourdough bread.
Liz
I’m new to sourdough this year and this is 100% my go to recipe! I’m so glad I found it because I’m sure it is a large part of my early success. I often triple it and make two plain loaves and one with a cinnamon swirl. ? I usually make it in the loaf pans, but I’ve also done many free form loaves and last bake I even tried proofing in a bowl with a floured towel and baking on my baking stone. It turned out great!
Amber Blamer
This is the first recipe I ever made with sourdough and my family loved it! I am so thankful for the detail of the instructions. I love that it’s for a loaf pan, making it more practical for using for my family. This will be my go to recipe and I’ll start making it in bulk because the first loaf was gone in a day! Thanks for the great recipe!!
Michelle
This is my first successful sourdough bread! I'm so excited! ? If I triple the patch can I freeze part of the dough to bake fresh later? Our freezer is too small to store a lot so freezing the already cooked loaf is out. How would I change the rising/baking when I take the dough out of the freezer?
[email protected]
The freezer will kill the sourdough so I wouldn't recommend doing that.
Emily Higgins
Love this recipe, I bake a couple loaves for my family every week. I've tried so many sourdough sandwich bread recipes and this one is the best by far!
Heather
I made my worst bread loaf ever using this recipe/method. Just wondering why is it missing the first step of doing the pre-ferment/levain and just goes straight to mixing starter with honey salt oil and water then the flour? Isn’t the preferment a crucial step with a sourdough bread? Mine turned out terrible/waste of time and I know that’s partly why. I noticed you have a better/updated version of this sandwich loaf on your site that’s thorough and includes all necessary steps. I wish I would’ve found and tried that one instead!
kateschat
If you're starting with active, bubbly starter as stated, this recipe is amazing. Your starter needs to be happy. I'm sorry it didnt work for you...I know many people that this is all they use because they dont like the extra steps of the other ones.
Steph
I’ve tried many sourdough recipes, but this is the one I keep coming back to again and again (and it’s my husband’s favorite!)
I’ve most recently started rolling with cinnamon and sugar and am perfecting getting the perfect swirl.
Laura Recker
This is a favorite here! First recipe where I found success with sourdough!
Maxinne Oosterkamp
I make this recipe weekly! I’ve tried many recipes and this one is by far the best. So happy I’ve came across this page.
Heidi Loe
Is there a way to get this recipe in grams? I like to measure all my things.
kateschat
I havent converted it, this one was for people 'scared' of weighing and just needing to get started baking sourdough!
Christy
This is by far our favorite sourdough recipe. I also make 6 loaves at a time and it freezes beautifully! Thank you so much for sharing your recipe
Elizabeth
What's the best way to freeze this recipe?
kateschat
I buy a roll of thick produce bags every couple years
Amelia B
LOVE THIS BREAD! My go-to was the Tartine country sourdough boule, but this recipe has replaced it! SO easy and forgiving. Easy to multiply recipe. Delicious. Sometimes I add raisins and cin/sugar swirl. Thank you Kate!
kateschat
that sounds so delicious!
Day Homestead
Awesome recipe! This has been my go-to sandwich breakfast recipe for my family. I can’t wait to give the new one a try!
Elizabeth
Amazing loaf. This recipe made me switch to never buying store bought again for school lunches. The kids love it!
Bethany
This is my go to recipe for a loaf of sourdough bread! I love adding in a 1/4 cup of hemp hearts or rolled oats or other seeds! My kids always love this bread and it is such an easy, go to recipe!
Jess
I made my starter this week following your Instagram stories and made this loaf today. I am so impressed with how well it turned out for my first time. Thank you!
Libby
I baked this today and I found the bottom very dark, almost burnt. Should I have baked it at a lower temperature or less time? I baked it in the lower third of my oven.
kateschat
Try in the middle of your oven, and lower temp?
Sarah
Does this work with white wheat flour?
Dee Porter
It should! You may have to experiment a bit with how much flour to use.
Jaylssa Loew
My family and I loved this recipe! If I want to make more than one loaf at a time do I mix the dough all together and then seperate the loaves? If so how and when would I do that? Or do I make the recipe in seperate bowls?
Dee Porter
Yes mix all together then separate into loaves!
Janine
Love it! So good!
When I put it in the fridge after shaping the loaves should I cover it with anything? Feels weird to leave it to the air?
[email protected]
yes cover will a damp towel or in a plastic bag so it won't dry out.
Nicole
Do you use white AP Flour? Or white bread flour? Eager to find a loaf recipe to convert my sourdough baking to lunches for the kiddos!
[email protected]
I usually use an all purpose, unbleached (organic sometimes) white flour
Connie
I'm excited to try your recipe. For the starter are you using a fed, active starter or discard?
[email protected]
It's an active starter