Brown Butter Sandwich Bread
This simple sandwich bread is flavored with aromatic brown butter, honey, and milk, for a freshly baked homemade treat!
99% of the time I grab a loaf of bread off the shelf at the grocery store, I can never manage to get it into my cart.
You see, I often feel a bit lazy about baking bread, and am tempted to grab a loaf and be done with it. But I also can’t help but look at the list of ingredients on those super shelf stable breads and get a little freaked out. How come these breads stay soft as ever and never get moldy after 2+ weeks? Something about that just peeves me out.
The other 1% of the time I cave and buy the shelf bread because it’s easy, but most of the time I give myself a mental kick-in-the-butt and resolve to go home and make my own because I know that most breads aren’t difficult to make. It’s just a matter of being patient with the yeast and blocking off a little bit of time.
This is a classic white sandwich loaf that has brown butter and honey added to it, and both give the bread great flavor and aroma. You can see the browned milk solids from the butter that’s been combined with milk here:
To finish off the liquid ingredients for the bread, add some honey:
Mix the liquid and dry ingredients together and knead with a stand mixer. Let it rise, then spread your dough out into an 8×8 inch square on a floured surface.
Roll up the square like you would a cinnamon roll, pinching the seam at the end.
With the seam on the bottom, lift the bread roll and gently place it in a butter greased loaf pan.
(Yes, that’s my big pink robe. Whoops. Just a little Saturday morning baking).
With your fingers, lightly press the loaf into the sides of the greased pan, but don’t push too hard and deflate the dough too much.
Let the dough rise for about 30 minutes in the greased pan, and it’s ready to be baked!
Enjoy!
Brown Butter Sandwich Bread
Ingredients
- 3 tbsp unsalted butter
- 1 cup milk
- 1/3 cup water
- 3 tbsp honey
- 2.25 tsp instant yeast
- 15 oz all purpose flour, by weight (3 cups, measured)
- 2 tsp salt
Instructions
- Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. With the cup of milk standing by and ready to go, brown the butter very carefully for 1-2 minutes, being sure to watch diligently and swirl the pan often. Once the butter has browned, immediately add the cold milk (otherwise the butter will go from brown to burned). Add the water, and honey as well. Bring this mixture up to 115 degrees F, then stir in the yeast. Let this mixture sit for 10 minutes until bubbly and foamy.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk to combine the flour and salt. Fit the machine with the dough hook, and pour in the liquid ingredients. Stir the ingredients with a spatula to roughly combine, then turn the dough hook onto medium low heat (level 2) and knead for 10 minutes. The dough will be sticky, and that’s okay (adding more flour would make the loaf denser). Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let the dough double in size, which should take about 1 hour.
- Lightly flour your countertop and spread the dough into an 8×8 inch square. Roll the dough like a cinnamon roll, and pinch the seam closed. Grease a standard loaf pan* with butter, and place the bread roll seam side down into the pan, pressing the dough gently into the sides of the pan. Cover the loaf with plastic wrap and let it rise for 30 minutes. The dough will not rise visibly by much.
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F, and place a sheet pan on the lowest shelf of the oven. Add enough boiling water to cover the bottom of the sheet pan, then bake the bread on the shelf above the water for 40-50 minutes until the inside registers 190 to 200 degrees on an instant read thermometer. Let the bread cool completely on a wire rack before slicing it. Enjoy!
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition is estimated using a food database and is only intended to be used as a guideline for informational purposes.
114 Comments on “Brown Butter Sandwich Bread”
This recipe looks like it would be soooo good, but I’ve tried this recipe twice and failed miserably! I’m trying my hand at making sandwich bread and was so looking forward to trying this!
oh no! lets figure this out. How is your bread coming out?
Can I knead this by hand? How long should I do so? Would the window-pane test work on this dough?
How do you prevent the top from getting super dark?
Try putting on a lower rack in the oven. Or, cover the top loosely with aluminum foil partway through baking if you notice it browning too much.
So good. New fave bread recipe. I used 2 c bread flour and 1 c all purpose because I wanted more fluff.
The top crust concerned me for a second because it is pretty firm, but the inside is perfect at 40 minutes. Great flavor and it will be very difficult to buy store bought bread ever again.
I tried this yesterday and apparently my yeast was dead so I went back to the store and am trying again. Fingers crossed it works! I love brown butter and bread so….how could it not be my new favorite thing. Lol
I’m looking for a cinnamon quick bread receipe for the bread basket for church. Thank you I want rasin cinnamon quick bread. thank you beverly collier 47%H.
This recipe sounds really promising 🙂
Do you have a specific instant read thermometer you recommend?
Every time I look up reviews on thermometers, they seem to always refer to using it for meat …does it matter/is it the same type of thermometer regardless of what you are cooking/baking?
Thanks!
It’s expensive (about $100), but I love the thermapen. I use it everyday, for everything.
I had to add an extra 1/3 cup more flour as I hand-kneaded this moist, sticky dough. Having a dough scraper came in really handy as I flipped it over on itself. It was a little like working with some wet artisan sourdoughs at first until the gluten strands developed. It rose really well though. I can’t wait for it to cool so I can have a slice. It looks beautiful!