This recipe is the best homemade sourdough bread recipe that I’ve ever made for sandwiches and sliced bread for eating every day. You can make it with sourdough or store-bought yeast, and it has a soft crust and a good texture that’s not too crumbly or dry. It has about 20 minutes total of hands-on time if you use a mixer to make it, and it freezes well.
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What you need to make this recipe.
The ingredients for this one are simple, but each one is important because they affect how soft the crust is going to be.
- AP flour
- water
- sugar
- vegetable oil
- salt
- sourdough starter or commercial yeast
You can make this with sourdough starter and by making a sponge or not, or you can use commercial yeast and do it that way. It’s basically three versions to choose from, but they’ll all work to give you a loaf that’s got a good crumb without holes in it and a soft crust.
Call me crazy, but I don’t like hard-crusted bread, even in a sourdough loaf. I like the flavor of sourdough A LOT, but I don’t want the crunchy crust that’s hard to chew. This recipe comes out of the oven feeling like the crust is going to be hard, but it softens up as it cools off. By the time it’s completely cooled, the crust is soft, not at all crunchy, and easy to chew, so you won’t be fighting it when you eat it.
If you want to skip the sourdough and use dry yeast from the store, that’s also fine. The original recipe that I started with was meant for commercial yeast, and I adapted it for sourdough, so it will work with both.
I don’t even buy bread from the store anymore, I just make this once a week to give us two loaves that we eat during the week for breakfast, sandwiches, and anything else we’d use sliced bread for.
Bread recipe with three variations.
Equipment (this is the same for all three recipe variations:
- Stand mixer with a dough hook
- Bowl to develop the sourdough sponge if you’re using one. I use a Pyrex mixing bowl with a lid to keep it from getting messed up while it’s working.
- Measuring cups
- Silicone spatula
- Loaf pans (I use both glass and metal, they both work fine.)
- Cooling rack
Variation 1, using a sourdough sponge:
Ingredients:
For the sponge:
- 1/2 cup sourdough starter
- 1 cup water
- 1 1/2 cup unbleached AP flour
Make the sponge by mixing the ingredients and letting it sit overnight or for at least 12 hours. Don’t let it go much longer than 18 hours or the yeast can start to get stressed and it won’t be as good as it could be in the final bread. When you make a sponge you’re basically livening the yeast up and getting it active so that it will be ready to go to work in the bread dough.
When you’re ready to make the bread, put the sponge into the bowl of a stand mixer and follow the recipe the usual way.
Variation 2, starter but no developed sponge:
If you don’t have time to make a sponge (or you forget), you can still use sourdough starter but the rising time for the first rise will take a lot longer. It could take up to 4-5 hours depending on how hot it is, so be patient.
For this version, make the recipe for the sourdough sponge listed above and put that in the mixer bowl first. Then add the ingredients below and continue as usual with the rest of the recipe.
Variation 3, commercial yeast:
Instead of using the sourdough starter, add 2 Tbsp of dry yeast to 1 cup of water and let it soften. Put that into the mixer bowl, add 1 1/2 cups of flour, then add the rest of the ingredients and follow the following recipe the rest of the way.
Make the bread (this is the same for all three variations):
For all of the variations on the bread recipe, add the ingredients to the mixer bowl in this order:
- Sourdough sponge (variation 1,) Sourdough starter with water and flour (variation 2,) or softened commercial yeast with flour mixture (variation 3.)
- 5 cups unbleached AP flour
- 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
- 2 Tbsp sugar
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 cup water plus more as needed
Turn the stand mixer with the dough hook on to the lowest speed, and add 1 cup of water while it’s running slowly. Scrape the sides of the bowl to incorporate any dry flour that might be stuck to the sides of the bowl. As the mixture starts getting combined well, check the dough and add 1/4 to 1/2 cup more water as you need to.
You want the bread dough to be SLIGHTLY wet, but not sticky. If you touch the dough ball it should feel like it’s wet, but you should be able to pull your fingers away without having anything stuck to them. If the dough is too wet, add some more four. If it’s too dry and it doesn’t feel at all damp, add a tiny bit more water until it feels right.
Knead the dough in the mixer on the second-highest speed for about 5 minutes, then cover it with a cloth and let it sit at room temperature until it doubles in size.
For hand-kneading:
If you don’t have a machine to make it in, follow the recipe using a mixing bowl that you use to combine the ingredients (starting out with only 1 cup of water) and 4 cups of the flour, reserving one cup. Add the additional flour until the dough forms a workable ball, then turn it out onto a slightly floured counter. Use the reserved 1 cup of flour to knead the dough, using ALL of the flour int he process, and adding a little bit of water as you go to keep the dough ball workable as you knead it.
The goal for hand-kneading is to use all of the flour and only add as much water as you need to to keep the dough workable and not too stiff. Adding more than the total 5 cups of flour in the last part of the recipe will change the final texture of the bread, so use all of that but adjust the water, not the amount of flour, to get the dough to the correct consistency.
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Bake the bread.
When the dough has risen to double the size, grease the bottom of two loaf pans and divide the dough ball in half. Round the dough by stretching it in your hands and pulling it down to the bottom of the dough ball while you’re holding it, then put one ball in each of the two pans. Cover the pans with the cloth and let them double in size again. This should take a couple of hours depending on how hot it is.
About 15 minutes before the dough has doubled in size in the pans, preheat the oven to 375 F (190 Celsius). When the oven is ready, cut a slit in the top of each loaf to let the gas escape as it bakes, and put the pans in the oven.
Bake for 40 minutes and take the loaves out of the oven. Take them out of the pans and put them on a cooling rack to cool off.
When they’re completely cooled, you can store them in gallon-sized ziplock bags and freeze one loaf. These freeze well for a week or so, more if needed, but if you’re going to freeze them for much longer make sure that the air in the bag is completely squeezed out to prevent freezer burn.
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