Your New Favorite Sourdough Sandwich Bread
This recipe is truly a labor (loaf) of love. It’s been tested, reworked, tested, tasted, and reworked again. All to make it easy, painless, and super delicious for you here in South Asia. I am so proud of this recipe — and so thankful for Brodie’s sourdough expertise as we questioned and worked through it together. I hope you love it as much as we do. With a healthy sourdough starter, you can make this bread too — easy peasy! I’ve worked this recipe for winter in Delhi, so as it warms up, you’ll change the rise times based off of how the dough reacts. I’ll be sure to update any changes I make. But for now, BEHOLD: your newest, favorite, softest, yummiest sourdough sandwich bread. ITS AMAZING.
For visual learners, watch my Instagram Reel of the full 30 hours (with timings) of when I did each step.
Your New Favorite Sourdough Sandwich Bread
24-ish hours - 1 loaf bread
100 grams active starter (it has doubled since you fed it)
310 grams 100 - 110 degree filtered water
30 grams honey
500 grams Maida (all purpose flour)
2 teaspoons salt
1.5 tablespoons olive oil
1 tsp baking powder
Once your starter has doubled in size, to a large bowl, mix together the first 3 ingredients. Add the remaining ingredients and mix together to form a dough. Cover with a damp towel and let rest for 30 minutes.
Wetting your hands with filtered water, uncover the dough and perform 4-6 stretch and folds with the dough, pulling the dough up on the side and pulling it towards you. Rotate the bowl after each stretch and pull so that each time you pull the dough, you’re pulling it towards you. Cover the dough and let rest for 20 minutes.
Wet your hands and perform 1 more round of 4-6 stretch and folds with the dough. Cover and let it bulk rise for 10-15 hours, until the dough is jiggly, bubbly, and at least doubled in size. This time will vary depending on the temperature in your house. During the winter season, with the inside temperature of our house at around 65 degrees inside, this bulk rise is around 16 hours.
Once the dough is doubled in size, grease a bread loaf pan with ghee or olive oil and lightly flour your clean counter top. Dumping the dough onto the lightly floured surface, stretch the dough into a long triangle, the short side of the rectangle no longer than the length of your bread pan. Using your finger tips, dimple the dough rectangle. Lightly flour your hands, roll the dough into a log and pull the dough towards you to create tension and shape the dough.
Place the dough in the greased bread loaf and cover with a damp towel to rise. During the winter, I warm my oven slightly so that its around 80 degrees inside and place the loaf in the oven until doubled in size. In my 80ish degree oven (I will repeatedly warm the oven as it cools during this 2-3 hour period), leave the dough until doubled in size.
You’ll know the dough is ready to bake when you lightly flour your finger, poke the bread, and it lazily bounces back. If it quickly bounces back, it is NOT ready. Just keep waiting :)
Once the dough is ready, preheat your oven to 190 degrees Celsius convection (375 degrees Fahrenheit) with both the top and bottom elements on (if you have a OTG style — if you have a normal, American style oven, then ignore this part of the instructions and preheat your oven as normal). Once your oven is preheated, turn off the top element so that just the bottom element is on and bake the loaf for 40-50 minutes, watching to make sure the top doesn’t burn.
Once the top is golden brown, remove from the oven and let cool a couple minutes. Remove the loaf from the pan fairly quickly (the longer you let it sit in the pan, the harder the crust will be) and let cool for 2 hours (DO NOT slice the bread while hot, it will deflate the bread).
Enjoy your next sandwich on sourdough bread with the Best Bread and Butter Pickles!
Check out more Sourdough Recipes!
Sourdough Discard Lemon Blueberry Muffins