Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread
This homemade Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread is made with 100% whole wheat flour, but it’s still light and fluffy. It’s great for sandwiches!
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I love a good sandwich. In fact, I’d say that sandwiches are my preferred choice for lunch every day. I’ve recently been in a kick of scrambling up two eggs and putting them between two lightly buttered pieces of toast (yup, that’s still a sandwich in my book). I think the cold weather has made me crave warm food at lunch. In the summer, I usually go with a standard cold-cut sandwich, but I load it up with all sorts of toppings…like a tasty Olive Spread or Pickled Banana Peppers. But here’s the thing about making sandwiches every day…I go through a lot of bread in my house! (But that’s fine since I love to bake bread, and I’m usually looking for any excuse possible to bake a fresh loaf!) I recently baked a couple batches of this Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread…and it’s definitely a new favorite in my house!
A sandwich is only as good as the bread it’s made on. I’ve heard this little saying before, and I couldn’t agree more! I’ve really grown to love the flavor of whole wheat breads, but homemade whole wheat bread is often dense and heavy. How do they make whole wheat bread at the store seem so much lighter? (I suspect the answer has something to do with all of those ingredients on the side of the package that I can’t pronounce…) So you can imagine my excitement when I came across this Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread from King Arthur Flour! It’s light, flavorful, and a perfect bread for sandwiches.
This bread features a bit of honey, molasses, or maple syrup…but just enough to give it a slightly sweet taste. (I’ve tried both honey and maple syrup when making this bread…and the honey is way better in my opinion.) Like any bread, you’ll need to make this on a day when you’re going to be around for a couple of hours. After all, you’ve got to give the yeast time to throw a party! Depending on how much bread you eat in your house, you could easily double this recipe and freeze one of the loaves. In fact, I’ve got a loaf sitting in the freezer right now…and I’m about to go pull it out for lunch today! (Check out this previous post for a White Sandwich Bread recipe, too.)
Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread
Ingredients
- 1 to 1¼ cups lukewarm water
- ¼ cup vegetable oil
- ¼ cup honey molasses, or maple syrup
- 3½ cups Whole Wheat Flour
- 2½ tsp instant yeast
- ¼ cup nonfat dried milk
- 1¼ tsp salt
Instructions
- Add all of the ingredients to the bowl of a countertop mixer fitted with the dough hook. Mix for 3-4 minutes on low speed, or until the ingredients are fully combined and no longer sticking to the bowl. Increase the speed to medium and continue mixing for 3-4 more minutes.
- Transfer the dough into a large bowl, cover it, and place in a warm location (85-90°F) for 1-1.5 hours, or until the dough has almost doubled in size.
- Flip the dough onto a lightly oiled countertop and shape it into an 8" log. Place the dough into a lightly oiled loaf pan, cover it, and place it back in a warm location for another 1-1.5 hours.
- Bake the bread at 350°F for 35-40 minutes. (Tip: After 20 minutes, place a piece of aluminum foil on top to prevent the loaf from over-browning.)
- Remove the bread from the pan and allow it to cool on a baking rack. Cool completely before slicing.
Homemade bread is the best! And it smells so darn good! I hate all those ingredients in store bought bread that I cannot pronounce…YUCK! Totally want to give this recipe a try! And I am so on board with the KAF love! They’re the best!
I know…I think homemade bread is possibly the BEST smell ever!! Thanks for stopping by, Molly!
Making homemade bread is on my baking goals for the year. I love that the ingredient list is so simple and you used natural sweeteners!! I can only imagine the level this brings your sandwiches up to!! I will try your recipe when I muster the courage to yeast it up.
Zainab! Don’t be scared of the yeast! Homemade bread is so amazing…I really hope you give it a shot.
I’ve never attempted to make sandwich bread before, but this recipe inspires me. Hate seeing all those random unknown ingredients on the side of my store bought bread.
Hey Laura! The unknown ingredients is exactly why I started making my own bread at home…I find bread baking to be really fun, and it makes the house smell great on baking days!
Looks delicious! I’ve been dying to being my journey into baking bread. Definitely going to start this year!
So happy I found your blog! It’s so rare to see other guys blogging from the kitchen! Refreshing!
Hey Graham! You definitely need to start the bread baking journey sooner than later…you’ll never go back to the store-bought stuff again. And thanks so much for stopping by…we guys need to stick together for sure!
I live in England and I don’t think you can buy King Arther Floor here, I am a follower of your recipe but find I can’t get a lot of the ingrediants. Can you give me any other choises. Thank you Joyce
Hey Joyce! While I am a fan of King Arthur Flour as a brand, any brand of bread flour should work. Also, I believe bread flour in England is called “hard flour” or “strong flour.” Also, I believe wheat flour is called “wholemeal flour.” So as long as you go with a wholemeal, strong flour…you should be fine! (Just don’t use self-rising flour!) As far as the other ingredients, I did a quick search of Tesco’s website, and it looks like they go by the same names as in the U.S. Please let me know if you have any other questions…it’s great to share recipes with someone in England! (Also, if you need to convert my U.S. measurements to UK measurements, I really like this site: http://www.onlineconversion.com/weight_volume_cooking.htm) Hope this helps!!
I can almost smell the bread from here! Yum!
On a totally unrelated note, I was wondering if you could answer a question I have. What is cream of tartar and where would it be located in the store?
thanks
SueAnn
Haha…yes, the smells over here are quite tempting, Sue Ann! (Too bad we can’t go outside in this weather.)
Cream of tartar is found in the baking/spice section, and it is often used as a stabilizer in a lot of baking recipes (particularly things like egg whites or meringues). It’s sold in little small containers. Hope this helps!
Delicious! I decided to try this after reading the blog last night and because I wanted fresh, hot bread when I woke up, I used the bread machine and timer. I was a little concerned about the amount of water because I couldn’t adjust it when the bread actually got going at 2am, but I went with the 1 and 1/4 and it was perfect! The intent was to use it as toast, but…no way! It was so soft and warm just the way it was. And it sliced up really nicely too, which isn’t always the case when I make bread. My daughter said the smell woke her up at 5:45am…gave her something to dream about before she had to actually get up. Whole wheat and the kids actually liked it! This will not be the last time for this recipe. Thanks, David!
Wow! Thank you so much, Judy!! I haven’t tried this bread in a bread machine, but I’m glad it worked out well. There’s nothing better than waking up to the smell of fresh bread, too. (but don’t tell the kids its whole wheat or they won’t like it anymore…haha!) Have a great day!!
I just started making bread last year… must give this recipe a try. Pinning for later 😉
Thanks, Katie! Don’t you love the smell (and taste of course) of homemade bread?? Enjoy!
Hi, I was getting ready to make this and realized that I am all out of vegetable oil. Could I use olive oil instead?? Or would that make it taste weird?
Hey Angela! Hmmm…I’ve never used olive oil for this bread. However, since it’s baked at a lower temperature than most breads, I would think olive oil would actually be fine here. Let me know what happens…I love olive oil, and if it works, I’m going to try it out next time I make this bread!
Thanks so much for the quick response! I’ll let you know how it turns out.
The bread came out great using olive oil. The only issue I had was that it didn’t seem to want to rise. I’m pretty sure that’s because of the temperature in my house though. I had to let it sit for much longer. It finally did and tastes so good!
Interesting! Thanks so much for reporting back, Angela. I’m almost out of bread so I might give this a shot using olive oil myself soon. And as far as rising, I actually turn put my dough (covered) in a warm oven to rise. I can’t set my oven to 80-85°, so I turn it on and as soon as I see it hit 100°, I cut it back off and open the door for a couple of seconds. Then the dough goes in for however long it takes. It’s not a perfect solution, but I’ve found that it works decently well!
Hi David! Thanks for sharing this. I look forward to trying it. I have some recipes that call for a “warm place”, like when I make creme fraiche, so I will turn on my oven light and that seems to warm it up enough to do what it needs to do. Glad I found your blog!
Hey Elaina! Thank you so much for stopping by…and commenting, too! That’s a really good tip about the oven light. I usually just warm my oven to 100°F (the first temperature that actually registers), and then cut it off immediately. That works, but after an hour or so, I notice that it has lost all of the heat. I’ll have to start leaving the oven light on…excellent tip! Thank you so much for being a Spiced fan…don’t be a stranger. Have a great weekend!
I was wondering if the dried nonfat milk could in some way be replaced with soymilk & less water (if so, how much)? I have some odd food intolerances (dairy & grain must be 4 hrs apart and NO potato’s). I have decided I have to figure out a way to make my own bread & this otherwise looks like an easy recipe that would work.
Hey Kristi! I think you can absolutely adjust this recipe. I should start with a disclaimer that I’ve never tried this, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. The water and dried nonfat milk powder combine to create milk…so you could just leave out the water and milk powder entirely. In it’s place, I would use 1 to 1 1/4 cups of soymilk. (The powder version just helps the dough mix a little more evenly, but this can definitely be done without the powder.) You may have to give it several attempts, so don’t be discouraged if the first attempt doesn’t work exactly right. The main issue here will be the amount of soymilk. You’re looking for a smooth, pliable dough that you can stretch slightly without tearing. If it looks really dry, add more soymilk 1 Tbsp at a time. Alternatively, if it looks wet and slightly “goopy” (sorry for the non-technical term) then add more flour 1 Tbsp at a time. Other than that, this is a pretty easy bread to make…I think it’ll work! Make sure to come back and let me (and other readers) know how it turns out, though. 🙂