Easy Soft and Fluffy Sourdough Sandwich Bread

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This soft sourdough sandwich bread is about as close as you’ll get to that store-bought bread texture. This bread has the addition of a crunchy crust and gut-friendly bacteria. Also, it won’t have all those additives and preservatives store-bought bread typically has. This recipe is super easy to make and just takes a little patience when waiting for the dough to rise and ferment. The results are well worth the wait. I’ll walk you through the recipe step-by-step with the addition of pictures to help you along the way. Now, let’s get to baking!

Equipment

Large glass bowl
Dough whisk
8″x4″ bread baking pan

Ingredients

350 g (1.5 cups) room temp water
100 g (1/2 cup) active sourdough starter
42 g (2 tbsp) honey
28 g (2 tbsp) olive oil
10 g (2 tsp) sea salt
450 g (3 3/4 cups) bread flour
100 g (3/4 cup) all purpose flour

Instructions

Add water, starter, honey olive oil and sea salt to a large glass bowl. Mix with the dough whisk.
Then, add bread flour and all purpose flour and mix with the dough whisk until well-incorporated and you can’t see any more dry bits of flour.
Cover the bowl with a non-airtight lid or towel and let rest for 30 minutes.
Next, fold in the edges of the dough over and over until you feel the dough gaining some elasticity and the dough is smooth on the bottom.
Flip the dough over so that it is smooth side up.
Cover the dough and let it rest for another 30 minutes.
Then, perform four stretch and folds on the dough. Start at one edge and stretch the dough as far as it will go without breaking and fold the dough onto itself. Turn the bowl a quarter of the way around after each stretch and fold so that you perform four stretch and folds in total.
Cover the bowl and let the dough rise for 8-12 hours or until doubled in size. The rise time will depend on the temperature of your kitchen.
Once the dough is doubled in size, turn it out onto a floured surface.
Roll the dough out into a small rectangle (about 10″ by 6″).
Similar to a cinnamon roll, start at a long end of the dough and roll it up.
Next, pinch each of the ends and tuck them under the roll.
Then, place the rolled dough into a butter-greased bread baking pan.
Place the dough in the refrigerator for 12 hours or overnight.
Place the dough in the refrigerator for 12 hours or overnight. This is the cold ferment. You can absolutely ferment for longer if you would like. I typically ferment up to 72 hours.
Then, let the dough rise for 2-4 hours or until close to doubled in size.
Preheat the oven to 375 F.
Next, place the bread in the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes or until the bread has an internal temperature of 205-210 F. The baking time is a wide range because I recommend checking your bread temperature at 30 minutes just in case your oven temperature varies from typical.
Let the bread cool for 30 minutes before slicing. Preferably, let it cool for an hour or more, but I know it’s hard to wait. Enjoy!