First let me clarify that when I say this sourdough sandwich bread is yeast-free, I mean it's free of any added yeast. There is yeast in this loaf, but it's the wild kind, seduced from the air around your kitchen by the flour and the water and by the potent chemistry they create together.
This is the most perfect sandwich bread I've ever baked, and yes, it's mostly white flour, but I don't feel like the devil about it. Research shows that the healthiness of white sourdough bread far exceeds that of wholegrain and multigrain breads.
That's because sourdough has a powerful effect on blood sugar: when left to work its fermenting magic, it breaks down the starches in the foods it's added to, making them easier to digest. Sourdough is also probiotic, which means it is packed with healthy gut bacteria, so you can feel truly holier-than-thou when you smear this bread with some peanut butter or use it to cradle a delicious vegan burger.
Many sourdough breads need to be started a day before, but this one can easily be made in about eight hours from start to finish, including three rise times. So if you start your bread late in the morning, you can easily have some in time for dinner.
I understand that most of you probably aren't sourdough nuts and don't have a jar of bubbly starter sitting on your kitchen table or in the refrigerator, but that doesn't mean I won't try to convert you. Making sourdough starter is one of the easiest things you can do-- all you need to do is stir flour and water with a spoon. Nature takes care of the rest. I used a recipe from the King Arthur Flour website to make my starter and it's excellent.
I did change the hydration -- the ratio of water to flour -- of the starter. The King Arthur recipe has 50 percent hydration, which means it has ½ cup of water for each 1 cup of flour used to make and feed the sourdough. My sourdough has 75 percent hydration, meaning I add ¾ cup of water for each cup of flour when I feed my sourdough. I find the 50 percent hydration starter just a tad too firm for my baking.
I am in love with my starter. I've been using it almost every weekend to make my whole-wheat sourdough waffles and they are such a hit that Jay and Desi demand them every week. This bread is our new favorite way to use it. All I need now is to name my starter-- I read somewhere that sourdough aficionados do that, and my friend Margo told me the other day that her mother, who kept hers alive for more than 30 years, called him "Herman."
Any suggestions?
More sourdough recipes:
Sourdough Sandwich Bread, yeast-free recipe:
The Best Sourdough Sandwich Bread, yeast-free
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups sourdough starter (see recipe notes for link)
- 2 cups lukewarm water
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 4-5 cups all purpose flour
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tsp salt
Instructions
- Place the sourdough starter in a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer. Add to it the wholewheat flour, 1 cup of all-purpose flour, and water. Mix well and set it aside, covered, in a warm place for four hours.
- Add 2 cups of all-purpose flour, olive oil and salt and mix. Add more flour as you knead until the dough becomes quite firm but still feels a little sticky to your fingers.
- Turn out the dough on the kitchen platform or any flat surface and knead by hand for 4-5 minutes or until the dough feels smooth and springy to your fingers and it barely sticks to the platform.
- Shape into a ball and place in an oiled bowl, turning the ball of dough around once to coat the top with oil.
- Cover tightly and place in a warm spot (like an oven with the light turned on) for at least two hours or until the dough has doubled.
- Punch down the dough and divide into two. Prep two standard loaf pans by spraying lightly with oil and then sprinkling on some cornmeal or semolina.
- Shape each portion of the dough into an oval. The dough should be very pliable and should shape easily.
- Place each loaf into the prepared loaf pans. Cover with a kitchen towel and let them stand in a warm place for at least two more hours or until the dough rises above the top of the loaf pans.
- About half an hour before baking, preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
- Place the loaves in the oven and bake 40 minutes.
- Remove the loaves from the oven, turn them out on a rack, and let them cool thoroughly before slicing.
Nutrition
Does this sourdough starter need to be fed and active or can you use the “discard” for this recipe?
This also makes a fantastic boule.
Thanks for the tip, Paul!
I named my starter Magnolia ?
What a beautiful name for a starter! ❤️
My daughter named our starter "Souron" (like Sauron from Lord of the Rings) ?
Love this recipe! I use it all the time. Thanks for sharing ?
Mine never rose correctly. What are some common troubleshooting?
After mixing the starter, water, and flour for the first rise should the dough be really watery? Will it work out once I add the flour for the second rise? Hoping it turns out because the bread looks delicious and I dont eat anything with added yeast!
Not watery but loose. It will get firmer after adding the other two cups of flour but will be a bit sticky still.
Can I put this in a bread maker? All the ingredients at same time or? It sounds amazing, but I don’t have a mixer and use a bread maker. Thank you!
How do i get a bread that has no sour after taste?
Hi, the charm of sourdough for many is the wonderful flavor. But if you want minimal sourdough flavor, use a freshly fed starter. Or you can just try making a regular sandwich bread, instead of sourdough.
I made this sandwich bread in a Pullman tin and came out pretty good excepting there was hardly any browning on any side. What do I have to do to bring that nice uniform browning all over?
The key to browning is to provide humidity in the first 10-15 minutes of baking at a high temperature, then finishing off at medium temperature for the rest.
This is done by either adding a tray of boiling water along with the bread, or covering the bread with a lid (such as the one your tin has) which entraps any humidity already in the bread. If your oven has a humidity function, all the better for you - you can use that instead.
During the first 10-15 minutes, bake at ~240C, and keep humid. Afterwards, remove the lid/tray and lower temperature to ~180C.
Keep baking for about 30 minutes, or until the temperature inside the bread is ~90C.
Great recipe! But just so you know: hydration of starter would be calculated by weight of its components not by volume. So if you use 100g flour and 75g of water then that’s a 75% hydration. But using 1cup of flour and 3/4cup water is NOT 75% hydration because the weight of the two are entirely different and weight of flour measured within volume varies greatly baker to baker depending on how you scoop your flour in
Hei. What is the hydration of the starter in this recipe? 75%??.
Thanks.
The ingredients for this recipe are also given in grams.
I would love to try your SOURDOUGH SANDWICH BREAD recipe but I am not sure what is all purpose flour called in Australia? We have plain, bread and self rising flour here . What is the all purpose flour's protein content in US please? Thank you.
If the 3 flours you mentioned APF is equivalent to your plain flour.
13 grams of protein in 1 cup (or 125 grams) of APF.
All purpose is just plain flour
At what stage is your starter? Full and fed at the top of its rise? or flat and hungry? That makes a difference - either that or please give the weight of starter. Thank you.
About five days after the last feeding! It isn't puffy at that stage.
hello ma'am! I'm new at this sourdough and so far have only made the artisan bread and pretzels but wanna make this loaf bread! when you said it hasn't been fed 5 days, is it basically a discard then? :O
Five days in the fridge or on the counter? So you are really using that first step as a feeding then? I’m interested for a few reasons, I have made bread with out of the fridge week or so old starter and I have seen recipes that start with feeding the starter to make a certain amount for the bread making and state that you need to use it at the height of activity before it deflates. I’m curious about the reasons for one or the other and why you do it the way you do with this recipe.
Always refrigerate your starter (except during the first seven days of making a new starter). And yes, that first step is like a feeding. You want to get the starter back to a stage where it is active and will help the bread rise.
I received a great starter from my daughter-in-law a few months ago and she uses this recipe. I made it with her the first time and it worked well. Now that I am home I cannot get it to work as well. The starter is active and I am in good shape with that. The first two risings are great! The 4 hour one and the first 2 hour one. The third and last does not rise very much at all. Is it OK to let rise for the 4 hours, then punch down and shape loaves and put in baking bowl or loaf then, let rise 2 hours only and then bake? My loaves are dense and pretty flat at the end of the third rise.
I had this same trouble!! The bread taste good but I know is much denser than the recipe intends. Hoping to get some guidance!
In my limited sourdough experience, this has happened to me a few times. I think its caused by over proofing where the yeast gets exhausted and also maybe not enough air bubbles in the dough to make a lofty crumb. Could also be hydration. Just my thoughts. I think it's hard to follow a recipe for sourdough when so much depends on environment and condition of the starter.
I’m not sure the first step is considered a rising, I think it’s more of a feeding or a feeding/ autolysis combo since you add the bulk of the flour along with salt and oil after it but your question confuses me a little because you need to add the rest of the ingredients after that first four hour ferment. The second 2 hour rise is actually the bulk rise I think as it is the first one with all the four and ingredients so probably necessary and the one where it rises most, doubles in size, mine wasn’t really punchable until after that rise anyway. Maybe the temperature was higher so 4 hours was too long or maybe it was over proofed during the first or second rise? Mine didn’t rise quite as high as I was thinking it would in the bread pan but it had great rise in the oven and came out looking perfect if that helps at all.