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”
I’m so in love with browned butter…adding it to sandwich bread is GENIUS!
Browned butter is so wonderful, I try to sneak it in whenever possible =)
I love this bread!!! I need to make bread at home- I’ve never done it! I’d eat the whole loaf for sure!
Thanks Dorothy! And I’m surprised to hear that, you are a baking queen! I’m sure your bread would be awesome =)
Hey this bread looks really good, I tried it today and I failed miserably! I’m thinking it’s because I did something wrong with the yeast, the strange thing about it is that I’ve always heard of that you should never stir yeast into anything warm, does that make any sense? I really want to make this bread right, looks so yummy!
I sent you an email so we can try to troubleshoot. It’s tasty bread and I’d like to help!
Wow, this looks fantastic! Do you think that it would keep just as well in the fridge as in the freezer? Our family uses bread every day but it usually takes us about a week to finish off a loaf.
Hi Myrtle, yes the fridge would be fine too. It may dry out a little bit but shouldn’t be very noticeable in such a short time period if it’s stored tightly in a bag. Enjoy!
This bread looks wonderful, but I have a question: Do you think that I could use active dry yeast, instead of instant yeast… and if so, would I make any other changes? Thank you!
Hi Rachel, sure, but I would use 3 tsp of the active dry. Hopefully you get sufficient rise from it. Let us know if it turns out okay with the active dry.
Thank you! I will give it a try and let you know! :o)
This is so lovely Joanne. My dad was a huge brown butter bread fan. So this brings back memories for me.
I have to admit I’m lazy when it comes to bread by hand. I use my bread maker way too much. I actually had 2 for years. So crazy. This makes me want to run in the kitchen and make a fresh load by hand.
Thanks Kim! I don’t think it’s bad to admit that, I think it’s fair to say bread is kind of a pain sometimes LOL.
That’s a gorgeous loaf of bread! And I love the added brown butter. Yum!
Thanks Kiran, I always change butter into brown butter when possible, it’s great stuff!
This looks so beautiful! And I’m always a fan of Saturday-morning-pink-robe-kind-of-baking! 🙂
Thanks Ali! Haha, I had a hard time putting that photo up, but oh well, I flaunt my robe =)
I made sandwich bread earlier this week! Yours turned out beautifully and nice step by step shots. My hands are always too covered in dough for those 🙂
You are a recipe pumping machine! haha. I’m amazed by how often you post, and hey, I hear you have a new design in the works! How exciting!
I decided for a while to only eat bread I cooked myself… and failed pretty miserably at sticking to it. This looks super easy AND super delicious!
It’s hard, isn’t it? Bread requires some time set aside to make it, and sometimes life is busy!
That’s not how grandma taught me and I don’t have a stand mixer…but I’m game!! Yum!! Brown butter!
That’s so awesome your grandma shared her cooking with you. I wish I could say the same!
Joanne, this bread looks perfect. Working with yeast really need us to be patient, waiting for it double is like waiting for next day, but at the end, the result is wonderful.
Haha it sounds like you’re impatient like I am! I agree though, it’s worth the wait!
I love baking bread! No fear of baking with yeast here. 🙂 Your brown butter sandwich bread sounds amazing, Joanne!
Woohoo! That’s awesome, Anna. How did its scary reputation come about? I wonder.
Hey Joanne! This bread sounds delicious. I love browned butter! What size is your loaf pan?
Browned butter is great stuff, isn’t it? It’s just a standard loaf pan, I think 9×5 or 8.5×4.5. If you have either of those it will work great =)
Joanne, I adore making fresh bread. Never thought to change out the regular butter with browned butter, can’t wait to give this recipe a try!
lol, I’m going through a bit of a brown butter phase lately!
does anyone know if you can double this recipe and how?
Hi Debi, you should be fine doubling this recipe. You can make it all in one batch and just double the ingredients.
Thank you Joanne. I just love, love, LOVE…Your site. You are an amazing and talented lady. Lately, I’ve been bored with the same old foods, but you have inspired me and my taste buds. I will look forward to getting future ideas!!! And, of course, I will be making lots of brown butter sandwich bread!