How to Make Soft Sourdough Sandwich Bread + 3 Helpful Tips

With a soft texture and buttery flavor, it’s no wonder my family loves this sourdough sandwich bread so much. But my homemade bread wasn’t always this good.

When I first started replacing all of our store-bought bread products with homemade sourdough options I was a little nervous.

I saw the traditional sourdough loaves and although they look beautiful and taste amazing, they are not a soft sandwich loaf that we were used to.

Then I found a recipe for a soft sandwich loaf from Lisa from Farmhouse on Boone and I was so excited!

But as with anything new, I didn’t get it right the first time.

My first many many loaves were so goofy looking AND dense.

Over time, with lots of practice, I figured out what was wrong and how to adjust the recipe from Lisa to make it a recipe that my family loves!

So I decided to share these tips with you before I forget them.

Watch the video here

How to store sourdough sandwich bread

Bread Box & Fabric Bread Bag (or wrapped in a tea towel)

There are many ways to store sourdough sandwich bread.

But the option I chose was to use a fabric bread bag (or tea towel) and a wooden bread box.

Another option is a metal bread box.

I had a wooden bread box that my father-in-law and uncle had built for me one year for Christmas so it worked out perfectly.

Plastic Zip-lock Bag

This is how I originally stored my sourdough.

At the beginning of my sourdough journey, I would make loaves that were significantly more dense than I do now.

(If this is something you struggle with I’ll touch on how I improved that over time later in the post.)

The added moisture from the ziplock bag helped keep the loaves softer.

But as I got better at making my homemade sandwich loaves soft I discovered I didn’t need them and the fabric let the bread breath.

So instead of spending money on new bags, I bought a bread bag/tea towels and started using them.

DON’T CUT THE LOAF INTO SLICES

To increase the shelf life of your homemade sourdough bread you do not want to slice your loaf.

The saying “the best thing since sliced bread” makes it sound like sliced bread is a good thing.

But with sourdough sandwich bread it is best to only slice as you need it.

Doing this will increase the length of time your bread can be stored and still be delicious.

Why is my sourdough sandwich bread dense

There are numerous reasons why your homemade sourdough bread might be dense.

• the starter wasn’t at it’s peak
• it’s too cold for the dough to ferment properly
• imbalanced water-to-flour ratio
• not kneading dough long enough
• Over proofing the dough

All of these are reasons I used to battle with dense sourdough bread.

But the biggest challenge I had was the water-to-flour ratio.

This took me a while to learn, but I finally learned this tip.

Add all the ingredients and then add flour at the end.

But don’t just dump all the flour in the bowl all at once.

I put the majority of the flour in the bowl and get it started but I reserve the last half a cup of flour.

After the ingredients are all mixed together I start sprinkling the half a cup of flour in a little at a time.

I only add enough flour to get it to form into a nice smooth ball and clean the dough off the sides of the bowl.

Just enough for the dough to “come together”.

This was game changer for me.

How long does sourdough sandwich bread last

That’s the thing about homemade sourdough bread.

It will get hard and begin to mold around day 6 in my experience.

But it’s actually a good thing!

Sounds silly, but if you think about it, all of the natural food that God made will eventually rot or mold.

It means it’s a natural, organic, and healthy thing.

Assuming my family doesn’t eat it before this, I can make a loaf last about a week.

The loaf will start to harden in the areas that are exposed to air.

To solve this problem, and not let good quality food go to waste, I just throw the slices into the toaster.

Helpful Tips

Pull butter out of the fridge when you feed your starter

I can’t count the number of times I’ve made this recipe with butter straight from the fridge because I forgot to pull it out.

Butter doesn’t take a super long time to get soft, but it never fails that I forget.

So I started pulling it out when I fed my starter.

I’m thinking about whatever bread recipe I’m going to make the following day, so I just pull out what I need for that specific recipe.

This has been a very helpful rhythm for me so that I have soft butter to work with.

Consider sharing starter with a friend

This is something that happened by accident.

I have a friend who makes sourdough and through conversation I learned that they had different struggles with their bread than I did.

(This was early on in our sourdough journeys.)

So I asked her if I could take a little bit of her starter and run some side-by-side experiments on her starter and mine.

Well, I accidentally mixed her starter into my mother starter.

At first I nearly cried.

I was so proud of the work and time that I had put into my starter and I didn’t know what was going to happen to it now.

But the most amazing thing happend!

My sourdough starter seemed to take on the good qualities of her starter and my starter and it dropped all the negative stuff.

I used to have to be very particular about stuff because my starter was new and weak.

But after I mixed them my starter became a super starter haha!

If it’s too cold, or I over ferment my bread I still end up with goofy loaves.

But generally, my sourdough recipes are not nearly as particular anymore.

Give yourself grace – homemade food isn’t always the same

This is the best thing I’ve learned about all things homemade.

Not just this soft sourdough sandwich bread recipe.

When you make things from home, they are not ALWAYS going to be the same.

Sometimes they will be slightly different.

Homemade granola. From scratch meatloaf. Homemade sauerkraut.

The goal is no long to make it the exact same every time.

The goal is to make something healthy for my family that is edible.

Sometimes my homemade food is AMAZING and my family devours it.

Other times I hear, this isn’t the best you’ve ever made.

But I’m okay with it not being perfect every time.

This is something I think we lost when we gave food making over to food companies.

They don’t sell items unless they are exactly perfect.

Sometimes I miss things tasting and feeling just “right”, but most of the time I am proud of the variation from day to day and season to season.

There is grace for the homemaker learning to make things with ingredients.

Enough for me, and enough for you too.

Soft Sourdough Sandwich Bread Ingredients

• 1 1/4 c. water
• 1/2 c. sourdough starter (if you don’t have one check out this post)
• 1 tbsp honey
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 1/2-4 c. all-purpose flour

Soft Sourdough Sandwich Bread Instructions

Combine Ingredients

1. Pour 1 1/4 c. water, 1/2 c. sourdough starter, 2 tbs honey, and 1 tsp salt into the mixer
2. Turn on mixer and begin to combine
3. Stop the mixer to add 3 1/2 c. of all-purpose flour
4. Once that is combined slowly add in the last 1/2 c. of flour. But only add enough so that the dough comes together and pulls away from the sides of the mixer bowl. I generally only add about 1/4 c. more flour but sometimes I need a little more.
5. One the dough is fully combined let the mixer run and knead the dough for 10-15minutes

Bulk Rise

1. Place dough in a bowl greased with butter and then put a lid on the bowl (I generally use a plate, but plastic wrap or a wet tea towel will also work)
2. Let it bulk rise for 8-12 hours. In the hot and humid summer, it will require less time, and in the winter it will require a longer time.

Shape Dough

1. After the bulk rise, lightly flour a working surface and remove the dough from the bowl and begin shaping. I stretch the flour out into an oval shape and then roll it into a log.
2. At this point, you can transfer the dough to a 9×5 loaf pan or you can have some fun and cut the loaf in half lengthwise 3/4 of the length, then twist the two pieces and transfer to a buttered loaf pan.
3. Cover the dough with plastic or a wet tea towel and let rise again for 2-4 hours. (For this specific loaf I only let it rise for 1 hour because of how hot it was)

Bake & Cool

1. Preheat the oven to 375F
2. Once the oven is preheated, remove the plastic/tea towel and place in oven for 40-45min.
3. After it is golden brown on top remove from oven and let rest in loaf pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack for the remainder of the cool time.

I typically let my loaves cool over night before I cut into them just because they maintain their texture better that way.

But I have cut into them before they were completely cool and they still taste amazing!

Thank you so much for visiting!

Other Sourdough Recipes

Sourdough Discard Pancakes

Lemon Ricotta Cookie with Sourdough Discard

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Have a great week! XoXo

Open Your Doors,
Aliya

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