Simple and Soft Sourdough Discard Sandwich Bread

Perfect soft and fluffy sourdough discard sandwich bread makes the ultimate PB&J or grilled cheese. Easy to throw together and full of whole grain goodness, it’s sure to become a staple in your kitchen.

Easy sourdough discard sandwich bread is a great recipe for a loaf of bread made with natural yeast. With all the goodness of whole grain flour, this delicious bread has a soft crust making it the best homemade bread for everything from grilled cheese to French toast. 

If you’ve been in the sourdough world for very long, you’ve undoubtedly grown a great love for and are so proud of that crusty, artisan boule of sourdough bread with a perfectly chewy crumb and lots of beautiful air bubbles. And no wonder! When we make a sourdough loaf, we’re really putting our whole heart into as we mix the dough with our fingers, allow it to consume our day and our minds as we check on it over and over until it’s just at that perfect moment. Then we place it gingerly in the oven hoping that our efforts will be rewarded with the perfect rise!  We pull it out of the oven and are rewarded with a beautiful golden crust and a warm and inviting smell. I love that perfect artisan loaf and a thick slice of toast with butter is always well worth the wait. 

That aside, if you’re like me, maybe there came a time on your bread baking journey when you were presenting a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to your four-year-old son, and you were so excited to be able to offer him such a great sandwich on your homemade sourdough bread. And you watched as he tried his best to bite through that award winning artisan crust. And his little teeth just weren’t a match for that beautifully chewy crumb that you worked so hard on. 

Why You’ll Love this Sourdough Discard Sandwich Bread

For my family, a well-stocked kitchen contains both an artisan sourdough boule and a loaf of whole wheat sourdough discard sandwich bread. We can’t have one without the other. Each plays it’s own ever important role at our table. Once you start making this recipe, you’ll never go back! It’s the kind of recipe that quickly becomes part of your weekly routine! Here’s some reasons why we love this bread and think you will, too!

1. Sourdough discard sandwich bread is so easy to make! You simply throw all of the ingredients in a mixer bowl and let the mixer do the work for you. There’s no stretching and folding, just let the mixer knead the dough for you and set it aside for the bulk fermentation.
2. This sourdough recipe can be made in one day. I can get this recipe going in the morning and have my sandwich bread ready by dinner time. Because of this, it fits very nicely into my kitchen routine.
3. It’s incredibly soft! Sourdough discard sandwich bread bakes soft and stays soft. We’re enriching the dough with butter and eggs which both help to give it a tender crumb and a soft chew.
4. So much flavor. Because this is a sourdough recipe with a long fermentation period, the flours have time to break down and release all of the natural sugars, aka flavor. Long fermentation= really yummy bread.
5. It’s so good for you! I love that this bread combines the goodness of whole grains with the superpowers of sourdough. And all without becoming dense or dry!

Baking with Sourdough Starter Discard

What is Sourdough Discard?

Sourdough discard is the excess starter that you remove before feeding your sourdough starter. When you feed your sourdough starter, you must double its volume in order to make sure it has enough food to sustain itself for 24 hours. If you are feeding your starter frequently, you can quickly build up a large amount and may be looking for ways to use it without “discarding” it. 

Should I Use Active Starter?

Sourdough discard does not have to be active, and often isn’t. For sourdough discard bread, you can use starter that is past its peak and has begun to decrease in volume. Your starter will start to lose bubbles and will sink in its container, almost like it’s deflating. This is just fine! The wild yeast is still alive and well, it’s just running out of food. Once we mix it with fresh flour for our sandwich bread it will revive. 

I would recommend using sourdough discard that has been setting on the counter for less than 24 hours. If you store your discard in the refrigerator, you will want to use it before it begins to form a liquid layer at the top. Discard that has been setting for this long will become very sour and acidic and can taste unpleasant in the final product. If you have an active, bubbly sourdough starter, you can certainly use that as well!

Health Benefits of Sourdough Bread

Baking with a sourdough starter and utilizing bulk fermentation (long fermentation times) has benefits to both the nutritional value and flavor. As the flour in the bread dough ferments, some vitamins and minerals become more accessible to your body making sourdough more nutrient dense than other store bought breads. Also, the same fermentation process can break down proteins in the flour that may cause digestive issues. This is why some people with gluten intolerance are able to enjoy sourdough bread.

As the flour in sourdough brioche hydrates and ferments over an eight-hour period, complex flavors can develop, and more sugar is released leading to a bread with a better taste. During my sourdough classes, I often get a lot of questions about how to speed up the rising time, but I think the real trick is learning to embrace these long waiting periods. Not only will they help you make better bread, but I also personally think they will help to make bread baking a more natural part of your daily routine.

Ingredients

Flour: I use a 50/50 mix of whole wheat flour and unbleached white bread flour. You can play around with this ratio as much as you like! 

Butter: Room temperature butter works best in this recipe. Butter keeps our bread nice and soft and gives it a tender crumb.

Egg: This sandwich bread is enriched with an egg for added softness. 

Maple syrup: I love to use maple syrup in my bread, but honey would work great and I’ve also used white sugar in a pinch!

Instant yeast: I use SAF instant yeast, and it never fails me. You can also use active dry yeast. Just a little bit in this recipe goes a long way!

Salt: Don’t forget the salt! I use table salt. 

Sourdough Starter: You can make this recipe with active sourdough starter or discard sourdough starter. For best results I prefer discard that has been fed in the last 24 hours. 

Equipment

This recipe works best in a stand mixer because it’s a wet dough that is difficult to knead by hand without adding too much additional flour.

If you’re so inclined, this recipe works perfectly with freshly milled whole wheat flour. Grinding your own whole wheat flour allows you to choose a finer grind than store-bought whole-wheat flour, which I prefer for sandwich bread. If you’re in the market for a grain mill, the NutriMill grain mill is just a rock star, but if you have a different grinder, I’m sure that will work very well.

The bread pans I use are 8 x 4 Norpro bread pans. I’ve had them forever and they just work well. I would definitely recommend doubling this recipe and making two loaves at a time.

A A A Thermopen for testing the internal temperature of the bread for doneness. Having a thermometer just takes the guess work out of knowing if the bread is done. If it goes too far, it could be too dry. If not far enough, the bread can be doughy or have reduced shelf life. At 190 degrees, it’s just perfect.

Bread bags are perfect for freezing these loaves especially if you decide to double the recipe, and they really keep them fresh!

Why does this Recipe Work?

Our sourdough discard sandwich bread recipe is incredibly simple to throw together. We’re going to put all of the ingredients, in any order, into the bowl of a stand mixer, and let the dough hook attachment do all of the work for us. We’re going to mix our dough on low speed to medium speed for 10 minutes in the stand mixer. At first, the dough may look really wet and you might be tempted to add in some extra flour. Don’t do it. This is how we end up with a super soft sourdough sandwich bread. Once the gluten starts to form, the dough will start to pull away from the sides of the bowl and form a ball. 

After we’ve finished mixing the dough, we can just cover the bowl with a piece of plastic wrap and basically forget about it for six hours for this first rise. The dough should double in volume and be puffed and rounded on the top. After the initial rise, we will shape it and let it have a second rise for two more hours before baking. I love that I don’t have to remember to come back and stretch and fold it throughout the day.

Giving our Natural Leavening a Boost

What really sets this recipe apart is the addition of 1/4 teaspoon of commercial yeast, which is foreign to most sourdough recipes. I’ve found that the additional ingredients in the sandwich bread, the butter and eggs, can cause the rising time to be too long. For example, if you decide to leave out the commercial yeast entirely, it will take the dough a long time, 16-20 hours to rise sufficiently. This is just too long. You will end up with a bread that has a very sour, almost acidic taste that I personally don’t want in my sandwich bread. 

Adding just a little bit of commercial yeast really solves this problem. Our sourdough discard sandwich bread is still going to rise and ferment for a total of eight hours, which is plenty of time for it to develop the perfect flavor while still being gentle on our bellies.

Shaping the Dough

After the bulk fermentation, you can begin shaping the dough and putting it into your loaf pan. First, butter your pan generously on the bottom and sides. Dust the counter lightly with flour or go without and use a bench scraper to pry any stuck bits from the counter. 

Place the dough on your work surface and with a rolling pin, roll it out into a rough rectangle, approximately 8-in x 12-inches. Next, begin rolling up the dough into a log. Seal the long edge, as well as the ends and place it in the bread tin seam side down. Let your dough rise for about two more hours, until the dough has risen about 3/4 of an inch above the rim of the pan.

Baking your Sourdough Discard Sandwich Bread

Bake your sandwich bread at 325 degrees for approximately 30 minutes, or until internal temperature reaches 190 degrees. Remove the bread from the oven and allow it to sit for five minutes, then remove it from the pan and place on cooling rack until fully cooled. Slice and serve with butter because every first slice of bread should be enjoyed simply with butter!