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”
It says “instant” yeast (the kind you mix in flour), but you are proofing it in liquid as you would “active dry” yeast. So is the type of yeast incorrect, or are you purposely proofing with instant yeast in
liquid and what would be the reason? Looks yummy. Browned butter is totally my thing! Thank you for clarifying!
Honestly you can use either. I like to proof anyway to make sure it’s alive and well before proceeding. There have been times where I proofed for a recipe and clearly the yeast was dead, so thank goodness I didn’t move on with the recipe. But that’s up to you. Regarding using instant, a while back I got in the habit of using instant over active dry per someone’s suggestion, I want to say Alton Brown, but this was probably 10 years ago so I don’t remember. I googled and found this: “Types of Yeast from Professional Baking by Wayne Gisslenapp: About 25% of the yeast cells in active dry yeast are dead due to the harsh conditions of the drying process. The presence of the dead cells can have a negative/..” so that’s the gist
Do you have a Cinnamon raisin bread recipe.
Here: https://www.fifteenspatulas.com/cinnamon-swirl-raisin-bread/
Hi Joanne. May I use full cream milk to make the bread ?
Hi Veronique, I’ve never tried it, but don’t see why not. Enjoy!
This recipe is amazing! Today was the first time I have made bread from scratch. Had seen Glen from LeGourmet on iFood.tv make it on one of his videos. It looks delicious, so I decided to give it a whirl. I am so pleased with how it turned out. The only mod I made was going 50/50 whole wheat flour and AP flour. Texture and flavor are outstanding! My wife, who is a total bread snob, absolutely loved it. Thank you for posting this recipe!! I will be making a loaf every weekend from here on. Here is a pic of how it turned out. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10158608145632627&set=a.10157081102562627&type=3&theater
Hi Joanne, thanks for your wonderful recipe! Do you have more bread recipes? I’m a bread lover battling gastritis and I’m looking to make bread on my own.
Also, you think it is OK to replace the regular milk in this recipe with almond/rice milk?
Thanks!
Andrei.
Hi Andrei, the milk replacement should be fine here. For bread, I recommend starting with something really easy like a no-knead bread. I have a couple on the site, like this https://www.fifteenspatulas.com/a-bread-recipe-for-those-who-dont-know-how-to-boil-water/ or this https://www.fifteenspatulas.com/asiago-black-pepper-bread/
Hi Joanne, thank you for the reply!
The Asiago Black Pepper Bread looks amazing! I have a question regarding this bread recipe: is it OK to substitute “15 oz bread flour” with Whole Wheat Flour?
Thanks,
Andrei.
Hi Andrei, how strange, this never came up in my email and I just came across it on my site. Sorry for the late response! Whole Wheat Flour as a general rule can’t be substituted one-for-one because there’s not as much gluten. It will be a lot denser. Usually you can get away with some, like swapping out 1 cup, but not all. Hope that helps.
Hi Joanne, OK, I understand. Thank you so much for your time, you’re the best ! 🙂
I’ll get one, but I wonder why my other bread comes out ok? It’s still delicious and the next day the top softened up a lot. It’s a fantastic bread. Would it work switching one cup of whit flour for 1 cup of wheat?
They are not expensive, I got mine for around $5. My oven lies all the time, as many do. I will set the oven to 350 and it starts at 425. Every. Single. Time. It’s not a cheap oven either. This is really common. So I would start there and check that. I often have to open the oven a bit to let it cool and let it settle out. If that doesn’t work well, you can always add foil on top to protect the top from getting too dark. You can try with the wheat, but the bread will likely be denser.
I’ve made this twice and he bread was delicious! My question is the first time I baked it for 40 minutes (my bad for not checking it) and the top was almost burnt. Way past crunchy. The bread was delicious, but I had to cur the top crust off. Made it again today and set my timer for 30 minutes. Top is still way too dark for my taste but the bread is still awesome. But when I put the thermometer in the bread it’s way warmer than 200 deg. Help. What am I doing wrong
Do you have an oven thermometer? One that’s independent of what it says on your actual oven?
This recipe is why I never want to buy store bought bread again! Seriously, it’s super easy to make. 30 minutes of mixing ingredients, letting the yeast bubble, and letting the stand mixer do all the hard work. 1 hour rise in bowl, 30 minute rise in bread pan, 40 minute bake a voila!!! Bread that my husband loves, that I love (and I’m not usually a bread person — I’m suddenly now into butter & toast), and that gives us wonderful sandwiches for our lunches. If you haven’t tried it, try it. And if you have, well, you already know the awesomeness that I’m talking about 😉 Fresh, homemade bread. It’s that easy!
Hi Lindsey, I’m so glad to hear this! And LOL I love butter and toast. It’s so underrated, and so delicious! Happy baking.
You don’t mention what size loaf pan. You don’t mention what the second rise should look like i.e. 1 in about the pan etc. Can I use oat flour in this recipe?
Hi Paris, I added those notes to the recipe, thanks for asking. Sometimes my older recipes don’t have as much information as I put in now. I think you could probably do 1/2 oat flour for this recipe and end up with a good texture, but I haven’t tried it personally.
Oh yeah! This makes an awesome loaf and it is SO VERY EASY!
Happy to hear that! Enjoy!
I tried this brown butter recipe and it tastes just awesome. I also recommend everyone to try this recipe at least one time you will love it.
Thanks for sharing these recipes.
Hi, can the mixing works by hand kneading? I don’t have a dough mixer…
Yes you can do that!
Easiest bread ever to make. Absolutely great!
Have made this three times in the past month. Love it. So great to no longer buy bread with all the preservatives. I do not go down the bread aisle anymore to buy bread. I had never made bread before this. Love the video and the great directions! Thank you!
I have this recipe going in the bread machine right now! I don’t have a dough hook attachment right now as a friend is borrowing it, but I couldn’t wait 😉 I followed the directions other then that to a T, but have you ever tried Oat Flour instead of all purpose flour?
I only ask bc on pinterest that was a comment so it made me curious! 😉
This is so good! The moment I saw this recipe, I found myself making it after a few minutes. I just started to learn baking and one of my frustrations is to make my own sandwich bread. ‘Coz like you, I do not want to buy it from the shelf. I used to make whole wheat bread and this is the perfect time to try all purpose flour for a loaf. I used coconut milk though! Not because I want it, but because I really need to make this bread now and I didn’t have any milk readily available. It went just fine. It just made my bread more softer!! It didn’t have any odd taste too, but just creamier! Thank you Joanne for this very simple recipe!
I used my bare hands to do the work, maybe next year, it’s time to buy my stand mixer!! I just wonder, if I were to replace whole wheat flour to this recipe, should I use the same measure/amount of you flour? TIA! 🙂
Hi Bubbie, I really enjoyed your comment! Glad you enjoyed the bread, and also to hear about your experience, particularly about the coconut. Cool to know. I haven’t tried with the whole wheat flour, but I imagine it would go pretty well. The only thing is, it doesn’t have as much protein so it won’t have as much gluten developing properties. It may be more dense as a result.