The Best Whole Grain Sandwich Bread Recipe

When I began milling my own whole wheat flour, the first thing I wanted to stop buying from the grocery store was sliced bread. I needed an easy, basic sandwich bread recipe.

I was so sick of buying nutrient-void, tasteless bread that wasn’t doing anything for my family aside from draining our bank account. Considering the versatility of sandwich bread, and how quickly my family of 5 can go through it, I knew that learning to bake delicious sandwich bread would bring multiple benefits.

As I scoured the internet and my cookbooks for a simple basic sandwich bread recipe using freshly milled whole grain flour, I began to get frustrated. It felt like every recipe I found either called for specialty ingredients I don’t keep on hand (I’m looking at you, sunflower lecithin) or had a lot of milk and/or eggs–which isn’t necessarily bad, I was just looking for stupid simple shelf stable ingredients that I could buy in bulk, cost effectively. We don’t raise laying hens, so eggs can add up.

I finally found this incredible recipe by Felicia from Grains and Grit. This was the first recipe to produce a loaf of bread that my family raved about. It made me a believer.

As I made it over and over, I began tweaking ingredients and methods. I fine-tuned the dough until it was exactly what my family and myself wanted from a loaf of homemade sandwich bread.

This recipe features a simple honey-wheat dough that always bakes up fluffy and delicious. It comes together super quick too, you only need one rise for about 30 minutes (or less depending on the warmth of your house).

A huge perk of using this sandwich bread recipe is that the dough is versatile. It’s a base is that you can shape some of the dough into a loaf or two of bread and use the rest for buns.

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How to Make the Best Whole Grain Sandwich Bread

What You’ll Need

You don’t need any commercial dough conditioners or specialty ingredients like vital wheat gluten or sunflower lecithin. There’s a lot of whole grain recipes that call for VWG or sunflower lecithin but those aren’t things I keep on hand, so I use recipes that don’t require those.

You can absolutely make soft, fluffy hamburger buns without any special ingredients!

You only need the simplest of ingredients:

• hard red wheat berries
• warm water
• instant yeast
• avocado oil
• lemon juice
• honey
• sea salt

Hard Red Wheat

For this dough, I almost exclusively use organic hard red wheat. It imparts the best flavor, in my opinion.

If you’d like to use a different grain, you absolutely can. Just make sure it’s a high protein wheat so the dough rises properly and has a solid gluten formation.

Other grains you could try would be: hard white wheat, rouge de bourdreaux, einkorn, spelt. You can also mix and match your grains–I’ve done half einkorn, half hard red and loved the result.

When using hard white wheat I’ll often use an extra half teaspoon of salt to boost flavor.

I haven’t tried this sandwich bread recipe with any flour from the store like all-purpose or bread flour, so I can’t speak for how well it works that way. I’ve only made this with freshly milled whole grain flour, since that’s what I prefer to bake with. If you try this with conventional flour, leave a comment and let me know how it went!

I order my hard red wheat in 25 lb bags here. I store the grain in a 5 gallon food-safe bucket with a gamma lid. This keeps them fresh and pest-free but still easy to access.

Warm Water

You want the water to be around 115-120 degrees Fahrenheit.

Yeast

I long to find the fancy yeast Adam Leonti recommends in his book Flour Lab but I’ve struggled to find it. If you have sources, please let me know!

For now, I use regular red star instant yeast. I purchase it in bulk from Costco and keep it in a jar in my freezer to keep it fresh longest.

Avocado Oil

If you don’t have avocado oil on hand, you can use olive oil instead without issue.

For avocado oil, you want to make sure you’re using pure 100% avocado oil. The two brands that offer that are Chosen and Mariannes. I buy Marianne’s avocado oil from Costco. It’s pure avocado oil and cost effective to purchase in bulk at Costco.

Don’t use vegetable oil or canola oil. These highly refined oils are inflammatory and should be avoided. None of the recipes or products I share will ever contain them. I am a major seed oil disrespecter. IYKYK.

Honey

I usually recommend buying + using raw honey, but because it gets heated in this recipe using not raw honey is totally fine. Raw honey is great to use for medicinal purposes and spreading on toast, but I do bake with “un-raw” honey. Local honey is always preferred, and try to always buy organic.

I live in the PNW where Costco offers local honey for a fair price, so I get my honey there.

Azure Standard offers raw honey at a great price point as well if you’re not able to shop Costco.

Lemon Juice

This is a game changer! I recently came across a tip from the ladies at Unsifted about adding lemon juice to your dough when working with freshly milled flour–a chemical reaction happens that results in softer bread. It was recommended to add 1 tablespoon of acid per 3 cups of grain, so this recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. I use organic bottled lemon juice for convenience sake.

This is a change I made in September 2023. I didn’t think this sandwich bread recipe could get any better, but wow! That little bit of lemon juice makes a huge difference in texture. You don’t get any lemon flavor coming through, so don’t worry about it changing the flavor.

Sea Salt

I always bake with Redmond’s Real Salt.

It’s made in America (Utah specifically) and full of trace minerals.

Celtic grey sea salt is another great option. Really, the idea is just to be using a salt that has trace minerals and is more minimally processed than your standard table salt.

Don’t skimp on the salt. When you’re baking with simple ingredients like this, using salt makes all the difference in flavor.

Equipment

Other than a grain mill, you don’t need anything special to make this basic sandwich bread.

I use a Nutrimill Harvest to stone-grind my wheat berries into flour. You can check it out here.

A stand mixer or bread machine helps speed up the kneading process, but it’s doable to knead by hand if you don’t have another way. I currently use a cheap stand mixer from Walmart, but I have my eye on this Bosch one–the way it’s constructed, it’s better suited for heavy duty kneading compared to a typical Kitchenaid.

When you cook and bake everything almost entirely from scratch, good mixing bowls are a must. I’m still on the hunt for the perfect set. For now, I use a mix of plastic and stainless steel. We move cross-country in the spring, so I’m waiting to upgrade any kitchen supplies until after that happens. A couple clean mixing bowls is all you need for this. Nothing fancy.

I use the bowl of my stand mixer, and one medium size mixing bowl (I believe it’s a 2 qt)

You’ll need a large cutting board, pastry mat or clean countertop for shaping your dough.

I use a dough scraper to turn the proofed dough out of the bowl, but your hand works too and that’s free.

For baking, I prefer using glass loaf pans. They bake well, they’re easy to clean, and you don’t have to worry about any of the chemicals you might find in a non-stick loaf pan. I use pyrex.

Parchment paper is a godsend in my kitchen. It makes cleanup easier, its nontoxic, it’s easy. Love it.

What You’ll Do

Now that you’ve gathered your ingredients and equipment, let’s get baking!

Mill the Flour

First steps first, it’s time to mill your hard red wheat berries into a fine flour.

To do this with my Nutrimill Harvest, I twist the top so the stones are almost touching but not quite.

You’ll mill 6 cups of wheat berries. This ends up as about 9ish cups of flour. I mill this into a medium or large mixing bowl.

Mix It Up

You take 3 cups of that flour, and add it to the bowl of your stand mixer.

In that same stand mixer bowl with the flour, you’re going to add 3 + 3/4 cups of warm water and 2.5 tablespoons of instant yeast. Give the mixture a stir, and let it sit for at least 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes have passed, the flour-water-yeast mixture should look bubbly and foamy. Add 1/2 cup of avocado oil and 1/2 cup of honey to this, and stir.

Pro Tip: Use the same 1/2 cup measuring cup for the oil and the honey, making sure to pour the oil first. Don’t rinse the measuring cup, but pour in the honey and add that to your mixture. Using the oiled measuring cup to add the honey helps it come out of the cup so much easier! No honey left behind.

For the softest slice of bread with minimal crumble, you’ll add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.

Add the rest of your freshly milled flour to the bowl of the stand mixer. Don’t forget to toss in your salt.

Knead It

Now you’re going to mix the dough on a low speed until it pulls away from the sides of the bowl and starts to look more like dough than batter. Once it pulls away from the sides, bump up the speed to medium and knead that dough. You want the dough to be soft, stretchy and only the slightest bit sticky.

Sometimes this takes 5-7 minutes, sometimes 8-10. You’ll learn that when working with freshly milled flour, there’s not an exact time window. You have to get a feel for the dough. While that might sound a little scary, you’ll get a feel for it quick. By the time you’ve made this sandwich bread recipe a few times, you’ll be a dough pro.

Congratulations, the dough is ready to shape into sandwich loaves.

Shape the Loaves

One batch of this dough yields 2 large, tall loaves or 3 smaller loaves. My family prefers when I make 3 smaller loaves, because they tend to be easier to cut and toast.

This is a helpful tutorial for shaping sandwich loaves. It’s the closest method I could find on video to what I do. I guess I’ll need to film my own tutorial.

After shaping your loaves, place them into parchment lined loaf pans. Glass are my favorite, but silicone can be a great option too and then you can actually skip the parchment paper. I’ve used nonstick before but highly prefer nontoxic options.

Cover your loaves with a clean tea towel and allow them to rise in a warm location until they’ve puffed up over the edge of the pan. You can try this proof test method to be sure it’s time to bake.

Bake the Bread

Bake these loaves at 350 F for 35 minutes. Smaller loaves are usually done at this point, larger loaves may have to bake another 5 minutes longer.

After removing them from the oven, I like to brush the tops of the loaves with butter or olive oil. It gives the loaves a soft, shiny texture.

Let the loaves cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes and move them to a cooling rack to cool completely before cutting. Letting the loaves rest before slicing helps ensure the best texture. Cutting into a hot loaf of bread too soon can result in gummy bread, and no one likes that.

We love eating this bread with grass-fed butter and homemade wild blackberry jam. It makes for incredible grilled cheese sandwiches, avocado toast and deli sandwiches. How will you eat yours?