Bread Machine Sourdough Sandwich Bread (No Oven)

This easy bread machine sourdough recipe produces a delicious sourdough bread. It is a fantastic sandwich bread to make at home because sourdough bread has an unique sour and tangy flavor. Sourdough bread tastes similar to the breads that were made hundreds of years ago (when home bakers used “wild” yeast versus today’s mass produced baker’s yeast in order to make their breads).

FYI – This sourdough bread recipe is mixed, kneaded & finished in your bread machine and does not use an oven (unlike some other bread machine sourdough recipes where the sourdough ends up being baked in an oven). Because our recipe only uses a bread machine to make sourdough bread, it tends to be a little easier to make.

Bread machine sourdough recipes are generally considered “beginner” sourdough breads (because bread machines have shorter rising cycles and thus create milder sourdoughs than most oven-baked sourdough recipes use longer leavening periods). Our recipe produces a rustic-style sandwich bread with a mild sourdough taste. This sourdough recipe is perfect if you want to make an amazing sourdough sandwich for lunch.

Bread Machine Sourdough Bread

Making sourdough bread can also be a fun family project. You can let them help you to grow & feed the sourdough starter. It also teaches kids a little biology (i.e. they can watch the yeast grow & create carbon dioxide bubbles in the starter).

If sourdough bread looks a little overwhelming (versus the usual bread machine recipe), we have included tons of helpful videos & instructions in the “Tips” section lower down on the page. For more great recipes, please visit Bread Dad’s main Bread Machine Recipes section. You will also find a printable and “pin-able” recipe at the bottom of the page.

Live Sourdough Starter Should Look “Spongy” & Bubbly

Ingredients – Sourdough Bread Machine Recipe

• 3/4 Cup – Water (lukewarm) – 175 milliliters
• 4 Tablespoons – Vegetable Oil – 60 milliliters
• 2 1/2 Cups – Bread Flour – 300 grams
• 1/2 Cup – Whole Wheat Flour – 58 grams
• 1 Tablespoon – White Granulated Sugar – 13 grams
• 1 Teaspoon – Salt – 6 grams
• 1 Teaspoon – Bread Machine Yeast – 3 grams
• 1 Cup – Sourdough Starter – 230 milliliters – You need to add LIVE sourdough starter (not dry starter) to the bread pan. See the tips section for more info.

Servings – Roughly 12 slices

Equipment – Measuring cup & spoons, sourdough starter jar, flexible spatula, oven mitts, cooling rack… and of course, a bread machine!

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Close-up of the Sourdough Bread – Lots of Internal “Bubbles”

Instructions – Sourdough Bread Machine Recipe

• Settings – Basic Bread, Light Color & 2 lbs.
• Unplug your bread machine.
• Remove the bread pan from the bread machine (so when you add the ingredients, they can not accidentally spill into the machine).
• Pour the water & oil into the bread pan first and then add the other ingredients (with the live sourdough starter being added last).
• Put the bread pan with ingredients back into unplugged bread machine.
• Plug in bread machine. Enter the correct settings (basic bread, light color & 2 lbs) and press the “start” button.
• When the bread machine has finished baking the bread, unplug the bread machine.
• Take out the bread pan and remove the bread from the bread pan. Place the bread on a cooling rack. Use oven mitts when removing the bread pan as it will be very hot!
• After removing the bread, don’t forget to remove the mixing paddle if it is stuck in the bread. Use oven mitts as the mixing paddle will be very hot coming out of the bread machine. Or wait until the bread is completely cooled and then remove the mixing paddle.
• Please read the tips section below (especially the sourdough starter tips) for extra information on how to make this recipe successfully.

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• Bread Machine – My favorites!
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Tips – Sourdough Bread Machine Recipe

• The tips below are designed to help sourdough & bread machine “novices” and those who haven’t touched their bread machine in years. This page contains many tips because working with a sourdough starter takes more time and effort when compared to regular bread machine yeast.
• Click on our “print recipe” link if you want to print out this recipe. It includes all of the recipe’s ingredients and instructions. However, the recipe print function does not include our tips section. Please read the tips section in order to avoid common recipe problems.
• This sourdough recipe is part of our series on Bread Machine Recipes.

• Be aware that this recipe creates a MILD tasting sourdough bread. It is not a super sour tasting bread. Why? Because a bread machine has roughly 3 hours (on the “basic” setting) to complete the mixing/kneading, rise and baking (with 1 hour of the 3 dedicated to baking the bread). So there is very little time for the sourdough bacteria to generate a strong sourdough taste. In contrast, many stronger tasting sourdough bread recipes often place the shaped dough in a refrigerator for 8-24 hours (or longer) for a final “proof” before baking it in the oven. This allows the sourdough bacteria (not the yeast) to generate sufficient amounts of lactic acid (which provides the sour flavor) in order to have a stronger sourdough taste.
• If you want a strong & more complex sourdough taste, you should look for a sourdough bread recipe that has a long proofing period (8-48 hours). These recipes are usually baked in an oven (and often use a Dutch oven container to bake the bread). These stronger flavored recipes are generally not bread machine recipes.
• Moreover, the taste of your sourdough bread maker bread partially depends on the starter that you buy. Try to find a starter with lots of positive flavor reviews if you are buying online. Also be aware that San Francisco-style sourdough starters tend to be more sour & tangy than many other sourdough starters (if you are looking for a sourdough with a stronger taste). Therefore, if you use a San Francisco-style starter, it could help to give your bread machine bread a slightly stronger sourdough taste.
• Why does this recipe include whole wheat flour? The natural bran and germ contained in whole wheat flour can help to increase the starter’s “sourness & tanginess”. In contrast, bread machine sourdough bread made with only white flour often has only a VERY mild or nonexistent sourdough flavor.
• Visitors – Please post your sourdough tips below in the comment box. There are many sourdough experts out there so we would love to learn how you make your sourdough breads, read your advice regarding the best sourdough starters, learn how you maintain your live sourdough starter for months, etc. Your tips are a great help to beginning sourdough bakers!!!

• Sourdough breads are usually more sour (duh!) & tangy than regular white breads. Moreover, sourdough bread is a very historic bread. Sourdough starters were the main leavening tool used for making bread hundreds of years ago. According to Wikipedia, “Sourdough remained the usual form of leavening down into the European Middle Ages until being replaced by barm from the beer brewing process, and after 1871 by purpose-cultured yeast”.
• Sourdough bread also has a more rustic looking interior and exterior with lots of yeast bubbles, etc.
• Sourdough starter provides the classic sourdough taste & the rise to the sourdough bread. The starter is a combination of lactic acid bacteria (the sourness) and yeast (the rise).
• This bread machine recipe produces a delicious & soft sourdough sandwich bread. Bread machine sourdough recipes tend to be beginner level sourdough recipes. As you gain experience with sourdough, you will be able to create more advanced hard-crusted & oven baked sourdough rolls & loaves with greater and/or varied sourdough flavor.

• This sourdough bread machine recipe requires you to use LIVE sourdough starter and DRY bread machine yeast. The live sourdough starter provides the classic sourdough taste & some rise to the bread machine sourdough. The dry bread machine yeast helps with the rise of the dough (because the live sourdough does not rise fast enough for most bread machine kneading, rising & baking cycles). Sourdough starters are generally slow rising (and are not designed for the rapid rise needed for most bread machine breads).
• Dry inactive sourdough starter is not the same as live sourdough starter. The dry sourdough starter must be feed with water & flour (over a number of days) before you have a sufficient quantity of live sourdough starter.
• What is dry sourdough starter? Dry sourdough starter is made by dehydrating live sourdough starter. This preserves the natural bacteria and yeast that is contained in live sourdough starters and allows for longer term storage options.

• You do not add dry sourdough starter directly to the bread pan. Dry sourdough starter does not work like dry bread machine yeast. You must first turn the dry & inactive sourdough starter into a LIVE & active sourdough starter before the sourdough starter can be added to the bread pan. This starter “activation” can take a number of days.
• When adding the live starter to the bread pan, it should be added last so it is not partially dissolved in the water & vegetable oil. I like to place the salt on the left of the bread pan, the bread machine yeast in the middle (in a small crater on the top of the flour) and the starter on the right side. Don’t worry if the starter falls partially onto the bread machine yeast (it is not a problem). But you do want to keep the starter & bread machine yeast away from the salt until the machine is turned on and everything starts to get mixed together. Salt can inhibit/kill the yeast & starter.

• You can buy either live sourdough starter directly or buy dry inactive sourdough starter and then create your own live sourdough starter.
• Live sourdough starters can be bought online from companies such as King Arthur Baking, Breadtopia, etc. They will rush you the live starter and then you need to take care of it (i.e. feed it). Make sure to read the instructions included with the live starter (and watch the videos below).
• I prefer to use dry inactive sourdough starter (which you can purchase from Amazon, King Arthur Baking, Breadtopia, etc.) due to its long-term storage advantage. I use dry inactive sourdough starter because I can create sourdough starter whenever I want (and I don’t have to worry about feeding live sourdough FOREVER… as I am kind of forgetful about things hiding in the back of the refrigerator!!!). However, the drawback to dry inactive sourdough starter is that you have to build it up over a week or so by feeding it everyday (with increasing amounts of flour & water) until it reaches the right volume & consistency. Of course, you should always read the instructions included with the dry sourdough starter (and watch the videos below) in order to learn how to activate the dry starter.
• If you need sourdough starters, sourdough jars or sourdough recipe books, please visit Bread Dad’s main Sourdough Tools page.

• Use bread flour and non-chlorinated water (i.e. natural non-carbonated spring water) to feed your starter.
• After the first 6-7 days (if you started with dry sourdough starter), the starter should look spongy and full of bubbles. See the “spongy” starter (in the clear container) picture earlier on this page as an example.
• When starting from scratch (with dry sourdough starter), it generally takes me about 6-7 days (depending on room temperature) to build up enough live starter for this recipe. This is the reason that people like to keep live sourdough starter in their refrigerator if they make lots of sourdough bread throughout the year.
• FYI – When the sourdough starter is fully activated and of sufficient quantity, I like to feed the starter early in the morning because this allows it to be ready by mid afternoon for the bread machine. With this “final” morning feeding, the starter should be ready within 6 to 8 hours (and at that time, it should look bubbly and vigorous). Please make sure to watch the videos and read the article links below regarding sourdough maintenance for more information.

• When adding the live sourdough starter to the bread pan, the sourdough starter should be a slightly wet dough (after you have scooped it out of the container where you have been growing the starter and the bubbles get partially compressed in the scooping action).
• Watch the videos below if you want to “see” the correct level of starter consistency.
• The starter should not look like soup or pancake batter when being added to the bread pan. You do not want the sourdough starter to be mainly liquid.
• If the starter is looking too wet during the 6-7 day “growing” process, add some flour until it reaches the right consistency.
• Of course, the starter should also not look very dry or the sourdough yeast will have a tough time growing. If the starter is too dry (i.e. you added too much flour when feeding the starter), you might have to add some extra water until the starter reaches the right consistency.

• Starter growth will vary in part due to room temperature. Warmer rooms (i.e. during the summer) result in faster rising and colder rooms (i.e. during the winter) result in slower rising.
• Make sure to mix your starter thoroughly when you feed it with flour and water. You do not want pockets of dry flour in your starter and/or bread.
• Live sourdough starter should smell slightly sour, yeasty & doughy. It should not smell bad, funky or rotten. In addition, any starter that has signs of mold should be thrown out.
• Be aware the volume of your starter in your “growing” container will might not match the volume required for the recipe. As you scoop out the starter from the container, the bubbles get squeezed out and the “volume” shrinks. I find that I need AT LEAST 3 cups of bubble filled starter from the container to equal the one measuring cup of “reduced bubble” starter used in this recipe. Use spoons to scoop out the starter out of the container and into your measuring cup. Don’t use a cup as the scoop or you might get too many bubbles & not enough starter.

• Here are some great sourdough starter videos to help you learn the process of creating & maintaining your bread machine sourdough starter.
• How to Activate Dry Sourdough Starter – Youtube Video
• How to Feed Newly Delivered Live Sourdough Starter – Youtube Video
• How to Maintain Live Sourdough Starter – Youtube Video & Youtube Video
• If you really get into sourdough, you might also like to read these more in-depth online sourdough guides.
• King Arthur Baking – Sourdough Baking: The Complete Guide
• Food & Wine – Beginner’s Guide to Sourdough

• Be aware that sourdough bread maker breads usually do not come out with a perfectly shaped bread top. The moisture variability of people’s starters (i.e. some people’s starters will be drier or wetter depending on how they made it) and lots of internal bubbles can lead to a lumpy top. Nevertheless, the bread will still taste delicious!
• If you are making multiple sourdough breads throughout the year, you probably want to maintain live sourdough starter year round in your refrigerator. However, if you are making sourdough bread maker bread infrequently and don’t want to worry about feeding the starter year round, you might prefer to use dry inactive sourdough starter.
• After you have made this recipe, you can store your remaining live sourdough starter in the refrigerator. However, you must remember to feed it! Please see the videos & online sourdough guide links for more information on how to maintain and store live sourdough starter.
• FYI – Some sourdough starters have been kept alive for over 100 years…. which means that someone has been probably feeding them roughly weekly for 100+ years!

• If want more sourdough flavor, you can use the dough setting and skip using the bread machine yeast (only using the sourdough starter for the rise). You would then put the dough in a bread pan, cover and let it rise to its normal baking height. Longer rising results in more sourdough flavor. Unfortunately, this takes longer than bread machine breads made with regular bread machine yeast. Finally, you will have to bake the sourdough bread in the oven.
• If your family doesn’t like the taste of mild sourdough then you are better off making Bread Dad’s buttery Bread Machine White Bread, extra soft Bread Machine Buttermilk Bread or old fashioned Bread Machine Country White Bread.
• Some bakers like to “scrape” the sides of the bread pan with a soft flexible spatula in order to loosen any flour stuck to the sides of the bread pan. Do not use a hard spatula as you might damage the interior of the bread pan. In addition, for safety reasons, do not put your hand inside the bread machine.
• Before using your bread machine, you should read the bread machine manufacturer’s  instructions in order to use the bread machine effectively and safely.

• If you have a problem with a bread machine recipe, please make sure that you are following the recipe exactly (i.e. using the correct bread machine settings), using the correct amount of an ingredient (i.e. don’t eyeball the measurements versus using a measurement cup or accidentally add a tablespoon when a teaspoon is called for), using the correct ingredients (i.e. bread machine yeast versus regular yeast or bread flour versus all purpose flour), etc. Please don’t “wing” things with recipes.
• If you start substituting ingredients (i.e. different types of flour), you are experimenting and should not expect similar results to the recipe shown above. Experimenting can be fun. However, you should expect some successes but more potential disappointments when you start to experiment with recipes. For example, if you substitute whole wheat flour for bread flour, you will probably experience a problem (as whole wheat flour doesn’t rise nearly as well as bread flour). Moreover, whole wheat flour has a totally different flavor.

• If you haven’t used your bread machine or bread maker in a long time, please buy some new bread machine yeast before making your bread. Old bread machine yeast can die or lose its potency and this will lead to bread that does not rise properly. Bread machine yeast is not likely to be viable if it has been sitting in your pantry for years.
• My recipes are based on US ingredient measurements (i.e. US cups & tablespoons). However, as a courtesy to our European visitors, I have also included some very ROUGH European equivalents (i.e. grams & milliliters). Since I rarely use European measurements when baking, please let me know in the comment section below if any of the European ingredient measurements need to be changed (i.e. for XYZ ingredient, milliliters are more commonly used versus the grams information listed in the recipe).
• Always wear oven mitts/gloves when dealing with a bread machine. The bread pan and the rest of the bread machine can get very hot during the baking process. This means that the bread pan and bread machine is likely to be very hot when you attempt to remove a baked good from the bread machine and/or bread pan.
• For more easy bread ideas, visit Bread Dad’s sections for Bread Machine Recipes and Bread Recipes.

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Questions

Why is sourdough sour?

According to Wikipedia, “Sourdough is a stable culture of lactic acid bacteria and yeast in a mixture of flour and water. Broadly speaking, the yeast produces gas (carbon dioxide) which leavens the dough, and the lactic acid bacteria produce lactic acid, which contributes flavor in the form of sourness.”

What is sourdough discard?

If you are keep sourdough in your refrigerator for long-term usage, you need to “discard” some of the old sourdough starter when you feed the starter (usually weekly with flour & water). If you don’t discard some of the starter then there might not be room in the container (as the newly fed starter grows in volume). In addition, discarding some of the starter helps to improve the sourdough taste (because inactive sourdough starter can taste more acidic after sitting in the refrigerator for a week).

Some people throw out the discard and others use it to make more sourdough recipes. For more information about the sourdough discard, you should read this King Arthur Baking sourdough maintenance article.

Reference Sources

• Wikipedia – Baker’s Yeast
• Wikipedia – Bread Machine
• Wikipedia – Sourdough

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