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Looking for a great sourdough sandwich bread to feed your family? This is the best sourdough sandwich bread recipe ever!

Though sourdough bread takes about two days to make, it’s mostly hands-off time – you just come back every so often and spend a few minutes prepping it for the next stage of fermentation.

When I first started this blog, the recipes were strictly gluten-free, and even when we started eating wheat again, I’ve kept the recipes here gluten-free, so I feel like I need to explain myself.

My husband suffers from celiac disease. For me, it wasn’t a big deal once I learned how to cook well with gluten-free flours. Or at least, that’s what I thought.

A few years into it, I started to notice some less-than-ideal reactions to gluten-free baked goods in myself, and my suspicion was confirmed in 2016, when I went to a food allergy conference.

There, vendors were loading up conference-goers with multiple samples of their products. The food provided at meals was also gluten-free.

And I have never been so sick in my life.

It turns out that almond flour, guar gum, xanthan gum, and several other common ingredients in gluten-free baked goods don’t sit well with my stomach.

So I started incorporating wheat back into my diet at home, and since the kids aren’t celiac either, Gabe is the only one left eating exclusively gluten-free.

That’s why a lot of the newer recipes here, such as molasses cookies, and pumpkin snickerdoodles, will have both the wheat and gluten-free option. Because we make both.

And that brings us to sourdough bread.

I’m nothing if not a nutrition nerd, and buying bread that I consider healthy is fairly pricey, so while I’m still careful not to contaminate Gabe’s food with wheat flour, I definitely knew that I wanted to start making homemade bread for myself and the kids.

And that bread is sourdough bread.

It’s important to know that I am not the queen of sourdough. I read legit sourdough bakers insights and methods and realize that they might faint at the way I do things.

In fact, if you want to go sourdough pro, I highly recommend New World Sourdough by Bryan Ford. He’s basically the king of sourdough.

What I do is different.

I don’t want it to be complicated or time-consuming, I don’t need stacks on stacks of beautiful, irresistible artisan bread. And I for sure don’t want sourdough discard that I have to figure out how to use.

What I want is sandwich bread for my kids that’s fermented to break down all the things that are hard to digest. Bread we can treat like regular bread that’s better for us. To make sandwiches with for weekday lunches and feel good about our nutrition.

To make french toast with when it gets stale.

I want an easy recipe with simple ingredients.

I don’t mind that it takes two days to make because it’s almost all hands-off time.

That’s where I’m coming from when I make sourdough bread, and I want you to know that, because I’m not a professional, and I’m not formally educated. I just know that this recipe works for me.

And it works for a lot of my friends too.

In fact, it wasn’t until a few years ago that I learned about this world of artisan sourdough breads that I like to call “fancy breads”.

I grew up in an Amish community where making sourdough was as simple as the recipe you see here – though most of my friends fed theirs with a potato, so I guess I’ve simplified it even further.

It’s just good bread to put on the table every day (if you want it that often).

Sourdough Bread-Making Notes

So with that, here are some quick notes, then we’ll get on to the recipe:

I start with sourdough starter straight from the fridge. No need to let it come to room temperature before feeding. In fact, if it’s been in the fridge for a while, it’s probably hungry, so feeding it as soon as you can is a bonus.
The exact times you work your dough doesn’t matter. Just feed your starter at some point in the morning, and work it again sometime in the early evening. I usually do mine right before I start making dinner – usually anywhere from 4:00, to 5:30, and then let it ferment on the counter until bedtime – about 9:00.
Likewise, when you get it out of the fridge the next morning doesn’t really matter as far as fermentation goes – just keep in mind that the earlier you get it out, the earlier in the day you’ll have bread.
The eggs and sugar in this recipe help keep your bread from going stale. We all know how quickly homemade bread starts to dry out, but the eggs and sugar add moisture and help stave that off. There’s a huge difference! When I make bread without them, it’s stale and stiff within a day or two. With eggs and sugar, it’ll last most of the week.
If you are making bread and another recipe at the same time, but only have your one reserved cup of starter, feed it twice, letting it ferment several hours both times to bulk up your starter, then remove the starter for your second recipe before moving on to the steps involving your stand mixer.

That’s all the notes I can think of for now. Happy baking! And if I missed any questions, leave a comment and I’ll reply and add them to this post.

Where to get sourdough starter

There are lots of recipes around the interwebz for creating your own starter by letting a flour and water mixture cultivate wild yeasts on your countertop.

I tried that once when I was about eleven and it didn’t turn out so well, so that kind of soured me (no pun intended) on doing it from scratch, and now I prefer a surefire starter, so in the past I’ve bummed some off a friend, and the one I’m using now, I bought from Zourdough on Etsy. I highly recommend Zourdough. He has several different starters to choose from (I ordered “Bella”), and they all come with detailed information on feeding and using them.