Best Soft White Sandwich Bread Recipe - Butter with a Side of Bread (2024)

White Bread recipe is made with basic ingredients & detailed instructions showing how to make bread! Done in just over an hour this recipeis one of the best soft white sandwich bread recipes.

If you love Bread as much as we do, find all of our Best Bread Recipes Here!

I began experimenting with bread recipes years and years ago and I get SO excited when I find a new one I love! It always amazed me how tiny shifts in ingredients come together and yield such a different result.

Soft White Bread Recipe

This white bread recipe can be used for literally anything. It makes great toast, great sandwich bread, anything! It’s tremendously soft and has the best texture. It’s even fabulous DAYS later, which is tough to achieve with homemade bread.

White Bread Recipe Ingredients

• Warm Water
• Granulated Sugar
• Instant/Active dry yeast
• Canola oil – you can also use vegetable oil or light olive oil
• 1 egg
• Salt
• Flour

How to Make White Bread

If you’ve never made bread before, here is the basic formula for making your own at home. It really is an easy process and you’ll be thrilled with the results. Plus your entire house will smell like freshly baked bread which is amazing.

Step 1: Assemble Bread Ingredients

You’ll need warm water, granulated sugar, instant OR active dry yeast, 1 egg, canola oil, salt and flour. That’s it!

Step 2: Dissolve the yeast and activate it by Proofing

This is a simple process that takes about 5 minutes. You can watch the video above to see what yeast looks like when it’s proofed. It’s possible to kill yeast if you use too hot of water, so aim for slightly warmer than luke-warm, or about 105°F. Combine warm water and the sugar, then stir to dissolve. Add in the yeast, give it a quick stir and then let it sit for 5 minutes. You’ll begin to see the yeast puff up until it covers the entire surface of the water.

Step 3: Add remaining ingredients and mix

Add the egg, the oil, salt and flour, then mix using an electric stand mixer until it’s well combined, about 2 minutes. You can mix by hand but it will take longer.

Step 4: Knead the Bread

Trust me, taking an extra 5 minutes to let your mixer knead the bread is worth it! Going through the process of kneading bread dough is crucial for bread with great texture. Kneading dough allows gluten to form which enables dough to rise better, be lighter and fluffier. You can knead by hand or with a mixer. I use the dough hook on my mixer to knead bread dough. If you knead by hand, you’ll want to knead for 7-8 minutes, depending on how consistent you are.

Step 5: First Rise

Place your lovely smooth, elastic bread dough in an oiled bowl and cover it with plastic wrap or a clean towel. I think plastic wrap works better because it traps hot air inside and thus, my dough requires a shorter first rise. Be sure to spray the side of the plastic wrap that will touch the dough, so that it doesn’t stick.

If your house is cool, your bread will take longer to rise. In the wintertime when my house is cooler than normal, I like to turn the oven on for 2-3 minutes, then turn it off and let the bowl of dough rise in there. The oven traps the heat for a longtime and it’s the perfect atmosphere for rising dough.

This White Bread recipe only needs to rise for 15 minutes.

Step 6: Punch Dough and Shape it

Punching the dough down quickly releases any air pockets that have developed and helps your bread have a more consistent texture.

Shape dough by rolling it gently into a ball and rolling it 2 or 3 times on the counter top so that the ball is more oblong. Tuck the ends underneath so that the loaf looks smooth.

Place in the pan. It doesn’t need to be touching the sides of the pan.

I like to brush an egg wash on the top of this bread to give it that smooth, shiny crust. It’s still soft and it ends up having incredible flavor. Just whisk together 1 whole egg and 1 TBSP water, then brush all over the outside of the dough, making sure to cover the entire surface of the dough.

Step 7: Second Rise

This White Bread only has a 10 minute second rise. I just place the pan on the stove near the oven while it preheats.

Step 8: Bake the Bread

You’re nearly there! This sandwich bread bakes for about 35-40 minutes. It bakes at a higher temp than other bread recipes- 400° F. Make sure your oven rack is on a lower setting so that the top doesn’t burn! I use a digital cooking thermometer near the end of the baking time to make sure the bread is fully cooked. Fully cooked bread will be 190-200 degrees F. Bread recipes that include milk will need to cook until 200 degrees, but since this one doesn’t, I take it out once it reaches 190 degrees. The top will be golden brown.

My all-time favoritecooking thermometer is the Thermapen. It’s super fast and incredibly durable. Anothergreat thermometer is the ThermoPopwhich is a more basic version that works just as well!

Step 9: Cool the Bread

Let the bread cool in the pan it cooked in so it can maintain it’s shape. Once it’s cooled you can transfer it to a cooling rack.

I prefer to cool it for at least 20 minutes. If you try and slice it while it’s too hot, the loaf will get smashed- it’s a soft bread!

AVOID SUNKEN BREAD

The easiest and best way to avoid sunken bread is to use a cooking thermometer to check the inside of the loaf. Fully cooked bread will register 200°F on a thermometer. My all-time favoritethermometer is the Thermapen. It’s super fast and incredibly durable. Anothergreat cooking thermometer is the ThermoPopwhich is a more basic version that works just as well!

Instant or Active Dry Yeast for Making Bread

If you use instant yeast, you can add it directly to your other dry ingredients when making bread. If you use active dry yeast, you’ll need to first dissolve it in warm water before using it in a recipe. I buy my yeast in bulk from Costco and it’s active dry yeast.

BEST BREAD PAN?

I bake a lot of bread and the pans I prefer are eitherceramic, glass or cast iron. These pans will bake bread more evenly and release the bread more easily after baking. I don’t like using dark or nonstick pans because the bread cooks unevenly. It darkens on the outside before the bread is cooked on the inside, so the coloring is uneven. Read more aboutwhich bread pan is the best here!

White Sandwich Bread Recipe FAQ

More incredible homemade bread recipes:

• Homemade Buttermilk Bread recipe
• Homemade Hawaiian Bread
• Honey Oat Bread recipe
• Cinnamon Raisin Bread
• Parmesan Garlic Dinner Rolls
• Fabulous French Bread
• Sweet Orange Dinner Rolls
• Easy Homemade Cheesy Breadsticks
• Tomato Parmesan Flatbread
• Potato Bread Recipe
• Soft Cornmeal Dinner Rolls

Thiswhite bread recipeis the best homemade bread. It’s great for sandwiches, toast, sides, anything! With only six ingredients it’s one of the easiestyeast bread recipes I’ve made!