Name: Freshly Milled Sourdough Sandwich Bread Loaf Recipe
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 1 h 5 min
Total time: 13 h 25 min
Yield: 16
Ingredients: 420 grams (3 cups) freshly milled flour (I use hard red wheat berries) OR whole wheat flour; 160 grams (1 cup) all purpose flour; 2 cups water; 1 Tbsp salt; 1/2 cup sourdough starter (active)

sourdough sandwich bread loaf recipe with freshly milled flour

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Sourdough sandwich bread is a versatile, easy loaf recipe to have on hand for making all things sandwiches!

In our house, we love bread – and I love a simple recipe!

This sourdough sandwich bread is made with five super simple ingredients: freshly milled flour (or store-bought whole wheat flour), all purpose flour, water, salt, and sourdough starter.

I prefer to keep my bread recipes as uncomplicated as possible, which makes bread quick and easy to produce in bulk, since it is a staple for us. That’s why I don’t use a recipe that calls for eggs, milk, honey, or specialized ingredients.

Utilizing freshly milled flour means I capitalize on the nutritional value of freshly milled flour. However, if you don’t have a grain mill or access to fresh milled flour, you can still make this recipe using store bought whole wheat flour – that’s what I did for years before recently purchasing a grain mill.

With a healthy starter and patience, this recipe will produce a hearty but soft and chewy sandwich bread.

Our family uses this sourdough sandwich bread with peanut butter and jam, deli meat, tuna or chicken salad for easy lunch sandwiches, or just to toast up and spread with butter to round out breakfast or provide an easy snack.

This post may contain affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. See my full disclosure here.

Why You’ll Love this Simple Sourdough Sandwich Bread Recipe:

The best thing about this recipe is that it is simple. It calls for simple ingredients, and it uses a simple method to produce a simple bread with simple kitchen equipment.

Fortunately, it also tastes fantastic, and yields a pleasantly wholesome, soft, chewy bread recipe.

But be forewarned, this is NOT a fluffy, dissolve-into-nothing-in-your-mouth white wonder bread recipe! I lean toward recipes that fill my kids’ bellies, contain wholesome ingredients for maximum health, and are low-budget. If that isn’t what you’re looking for, you might want to keep searching.

grain mill making freshly milled flour for sourdough sandwich bread

What You’ll Need to Make this Freshly Milled Sourdough Sandwich Loaf:

The ingredients you will need are:

freshly milled flour (OR whole wheat flour)
all purpose flour (just a little, to help the bread stay light enough to rise easily)
an active sourdough starter
salt
water

As far as equipment, you’ll need:

a grain mill (OPTIONAL – you can also make this recipe with whole wheat store bought flour)
a mixing bowl (ideally with a lid of some kind)
measuring cups (somewhat reliable) or a kitchen scale (much more reliable)
a dough hook or wooden spoon
2 bread pans (note this recipe only makes ONE loaf, but I use 2 pans to form a “lid” to trap the steam while the loaf bakes)
baking paper to line the pan or plenty of oil to grease the pan

What you do NOT need to make this Simple Sourdough Sandwich Bread Recipe:

Just to clarify, you won’t need:

a stand mixer
any banneton baskets
a dutch oven

When I started baking sourdough bread, it often seemed like recipes called for expensive and space-consuming equipment. Since I’ve needed to learn to cook from scratch in a small kitchen, I figured out how to make delicious sourdough products without a lot of fancy gadgets.

Why Should You Use Freshly Milled Flour?

There are a lot of benefits to utilizing freshly milled flour in your baked goods. Nutritionally, freshly milled flour is much more in alignment with what our bodies need than the processed and altered nutrition content of the bags of flour at the grocery store.

The key factors that have swayed me to utilize mostly freshly milled flour in this sourdough sandwich bread recipe is the health benefits.

As I mentioned, bread is a big staple in our house. It’s tasty, cheap, and filling. And when I make my own with freshly milled flour, I can maximize the nutrients I am feeding my family. I feel confident that when my kids are savoring a slice of homemade, from-scratch, freshly milled sourdough sandwich bread, they are eating something delicious AND nutritious.

How to Make Freshly Milled Sourdough Sandwich Bread:

I’ll go through these steps in more detail in the recipe card below, but the basic steps are as follows:

Measure and mill your flour
Combine the freshly milled flour with a little all purpose flour and water and mix into a loose dough
Allow the flour and water mixture to sit and autolyse
Add the salt and sourdough starter and mix well
Perform a series of stretch and folds, with rests in between
Allow to bulk ferment until approximately doubled in size
Prep the bread pans
Punch down and shape the loaf and place in the bread pan
Allow the dough to rise again in the bread pan
Bake the bread
Cool, slice, and enjoy!

sourdough sandwich loaf of bread made with mostly freshly milled flour hard red wheat berries

Tips for Success Making this Homemade, From-Scratch Sourdough Sandwich Bread Recipe:

Baking sourdough bread is a simple and easy process. However, it does require patience and a spirit of experimentation.

Remember, sourdough starter is a living culture, so it is going to respond and react to the environment in which it is being used.

Things like changes in temperature, humidity, and how recently the starter has been fed can all affect the process in small ways.

With that in mind, these are my tips to make the best sourdough sandwich loaf using my simple recipe:

Use a kitchen scale to measure your ingredients with the most accuracy. Once you get comfortable and know what the dough looks and feels like at each stage of the process, you can get more relaxed about it, but to start with, if you are not a confident baker, I encourage you to utilize a kitchen scale.
Be patient. Allow the dough to have its rest times, and allow it to complete its rises.
If unsure, err on the side of MORE stretch and folds. This will help develop your gluten and therefore the spring/rising ability of your bread.
Make sure your starter is active and robust. See tips below for nurturing your starter.
Don’t stress too much – people have literally been baking sourdough bread for thousands of years. It’s not meant to be complicated or difficult, and you ARE capable of doing it!

Tips for Caring for Your Starter (Using a VERY Simple Approach):

There are a lot of complicated instructions for how to care for your sourdough starter out there, and I basically ignore them all. However, I do have a very healthy, robust, resilient starter that is well established, so that means I can be pretty relaxed in my approach to it!

I keep three things in mind when it comes to my starter:

Warmer temperatures speed up the activity of the starter
Cooler temperatures slow down the activity of the starter
Fresh flour added to the starter will dilute the starters potency until it has a chance to “catch up” with metabolizing the starter.

With that in mind, I care for my starter in the following way:

My starter lives in my fridge the majority of the time.
I only feed my starter when it is getting low or a “hooch” of more than about an inch develops on the top of the starter.
I use the starter straight from the fridge to make bread.
After I feed it, if I plan to bake with it in the next 24 hours, I will leave it on the counter for a little while (anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours). Otherwise, it goes right back into the fridge to slowly metabolize the new flour
I keep my starter at a very thick batter consistency (thicker than pancake batter).
I only feed it freshly milled flour or store bought whole wheat flour – I think it likes the fiber.

dough preparing to rise for freshly milled sourdough sandwich bread

Frequently Asked Questions:

Can I use store bought whole wheat flour in place of freshly milled flour?

Yes, you can! I did for years. I’ve only recently gotten a grain mill. I do think using freshly milled flour provides a slightly softer and more moist loaf, but it is still good with store bought flour

What kind of wheat berries can I use?

I use hard red wheat berries when I make this loaf because I was given a bucket of it from my father-in-law! I also like the nutty taste of red wheat berries.

You can also use hard red or hard white wheat berries since both kinds have similar protein structures. The hard white wheat berries will likely result in a slightly sweeter and milder flavor along with a lighter color.

Can I make this bread overnight?

Yes, you can, and unless you have a very warm house or you utilize your oven in some way to help the dough stay very warm, you will likely need to make it overnight.

In the summer, I like to start the dough about 2 hours before I plan to go to bed, and then I get up in the morning, shape it, and let it rise and bake it mid morning.

In the winter, I usually make the dough mid to late afternoon, let it rise all night, and then mid to late morning I form it into a loaf, let it rise, and bake it sometime before dinner.

However, if you have a climate controlled home and you keep your house temperatures the same all the time, you will likely not need to adjust your timing according to the seasons.

How should I store the bread?

If you live in a very high humidity location, you will likely need to store this sourdough sandwich bread in the fridge after the first 24 hours.

If you live someplace with less humidity, you can probably store it at room temperature for 2-3 days.

If it takes you longer than that to eat up a loaf of bread, I suggest storing it in the fridge.

I usually keep my loaves in large plastic zip bags, or in a beeswax bread loaf bag.

Can I freeze this sourdough sandwich bread?

Absolutely. You can freeze it whole after it cools, and then when you want to eat it, thaw it and slice it at that time.

Or you can cool it and slice it, then freeze it already sliced so you can pull off a slice at a time straight from the freezer as needed.

Note that this is a relatively high hydration loaf, so it has a pretty high water content and as such, will freeze relatively solid and it isn’t always super easy to get a slice pulled off the loaf. If you need to consistently pull of just one slice of bread from a frozen loaf at a time, it may be worth putting a small piece of baking paper or parchment paper between the slices so they separate easier.

overhead homemade from scratch loaf of bread

Serving Suggestions for Simple Sourdough Sandwich Bread Using Freshly Milled Flour:

You can use this bread however you usually use bread! Some ideas are:

sandwiches
toast
grilled cheese
french toast
open-face sandwiches

If you find that the bread is starting to dry out (typically after about 3 days it will get a bit stale since it doesn’t have any preservatives in it), you can splash just a little bit of water on both sides of a slice and then pop it into the toaster and toast it. It will revive the bread quite well and make it more enjoyable to eat.

Closing Thoughts:

I hope you try this recipe and enjoy it! If you do, would you come back and leave it a 5-star review? I’ve also included a pinterest pin graphic in this blog post so you can share it on pinterest or save it to a board of baking recipes for easy reference. I’d love to see this simple sourdough sandwich bread recipe get shared around so others can have access to easy, delicious, nutritious bread as well!

Yield: 16 slices

Freshly Milled Sourdough Sandwich Bread Loaf Recipe

A moist, chewy, easy sourdough sandwich bread loaf recipe using mostly freshly milled flour. Easy, simple, and requires just simple gadgets and kitchen tools.

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 1 hour 5 minutes

Additional Time 12 hours

Total Time 13 hours 25 minutes

Ingredients

420 grams (3 cups) freshly milled flour (I use hard red wheat berries) OR whole wheat flour
160 grams (1 cup) all purpose flour
2 cups water
1 Tbsp salt
1/2 cup sourdough starter (active)

Instructions

Measure and mill your wheat berries
Combine the freshly milled flour with the all purpose flour and water and mix with a dough whisk into a loose dough and all flour is incorporated
Allow the flour and water mixture to sit and autolyse for 30 minutes
Add the salt and sourdough starter and mix well
Perform 2-4 stretch and folds, separated by about 30 minutes of covered rest time between stretch and folds
Cover the dough
Allow the dough to bulk ferment until approximately doubled in size (usually overnight is a good amount of time)
Prep 2 9x5 inch bread pans that can stack with one bread pan positioned normally and the other bread pan inverted on top of the first one.
Punch down and shape the loaf and place in one greased bread pan, position the second bread pan over the dough like a lid
Allow the dough to rise in the bread pan until at least even with the top of the bottom bread pan
Preheat the oven to 400 F (200 C)
Bake the bread for 65 minutes
Remove from the oven, remove the top bread pan, and remove the bread loaf from the bottom bread pan
Cool completely on a cooling rack, slice, and enjoy!

Super Simple Freshly Milled Sourdough Sandwich Bread