White Sandwich Bread Lab150 recipes

White Sandwich Bread Lab

White Sandwich Bread: what 150 recipes agree on

The soft white pan loaf: water or milk, fat, sugar, salt and yeast per 100 g of flour.

150 recipes from 83 sites, each reduced to grams and written as baker's percentages: grams of each ingredient per 100 g of flour, so a small recipe and a double batch line up. Below: the typical loaf, how far recipes stray from it, and a page for every recipe with a link to the original.

Recipes

150

from 83 sites

Typical flour

500 g

about 4 cups

Oven

375°F

190°C · median of 126

Bake time

33 min

most 25 to 40 min

The typical loaf of white sandwich bread

The median of all 150 recipes for each ingredient, scaled to 500 g of flour. No single recipe is exactly this: each line is the middle of its own distribution. “Most recipes” means the middle half, from the 25th to the 75th percentile.

Typical white sandwich bread recipe in grams, with the range most recipes use
IngredientGrams
FlourThe scale for everything else500 gabout 4 cups
LiquidMost recipes use 295 to 355 g320 gabout 1 1/3 cups
FatMost recipes use 25 to 55 g40 gabout 3 tbsp
SugarMost recipes use 9 to 31 g21 gabout 1 1/2 tbsp
SaltMost recipes use 8 to 11 g10 g
YeastMost recipes use 5 to 9 g7 g

Bake375°F (190°C) for about 33 minutes.

Volumes are approximate: flour at 125 g a cup, sugar 200 g, butter or oil 225 g, milk and other liquids 240 g.

Every recipe, ingredient by ingredient

Each dot is a recipe, placed by grams of the ingredient per 100 g of flour (100% would be as much as the flour). The shaded band is the middle half of recipes and the line is the median.

  1. Liquid

    median 64% · most 59 to 71%

    Water or milk by flour weight, the loaf's hydration. Milk softens the crumb and browns the crust.

    0%25%50%75%100%125%
    Each dot is up to 4 recipes.

    range 47 to 100%

  2. Fat

    median 8% · most 5 to 11%

    Butter or oil keeps a sandwich loaf soft and slows staling; lean breads use none.

    0%5%10%15%20%25%
    Each dot is up to 2 recipes.

    range 0 to 20% · 6% use none

  3. Sugar

    median 4.2% · most 1.9 to 6.2%

    Sugar or honey softens the crumb and browns the crust; a lean loaf uses none.

    0%5%10%15%20%
    Each dot is up to 2 recipes.

    range 0 to 16% · 8% use none

  4. Salt

    median 1.9% · most 1.5 to 2.2%

    About 2% of the flour, the standard in bread; less rises faster but tastes flat.

    0%1%2%3%4%
    Each dot is up to 4 recipes.

    range 0.9 to 3.2%

  5. Yeast

    median 1.3% · most 1 to 1.7%

    Instant or active dry; more yeast rises faster, less gives more flavor.

    0%1%2%3%4%5%
    Each dot is up to 3 recipes.

    range 0 to 4% · 0% use none

Where recipes disagree

Measured by how far apart the 25th and 75th percentile recipes are. The widest gaps are where the choice of recipe matters most.

  • Sugar. The middle half of recipes use 1.9 to 6.2% of the flour weight in sugar, so a recipe at the 75th percentile has 3.4 times as much as one at the 25th.
  • Fat. The middle half of recipes use 5 to 11% of the flour weight in fat, so a recipe at the 75th percentile has 2.2 times as much as one at the 25th.

Recipes agree most on liquid and salt: liquid 59 to 71%, salt 1.5 to 2.2% for the middle half.

Around the world

142 of the recipes come in 5 languages with enough of each to compare: English 66, French 36, German 21, Portuguese 11, Italian 8.

  • Italian recipes use 26% less liquid than English ones (50% against 68% of the flour weight).
  • German recipes use under a third as much sugar as English ones (1.3% against 5.9% of the flour weight).
Every language, ingredient by ingredient →

What the words in titles mean

English recipes whose titles use a word, against the ones that do not. What recipe writers do when they pick the word, not proof that it makes the texture.

Recipes called “homemade” (17) use about the same amounts as the rest on every ingredient measured here.

The most-reviewed recipes

34 white sandwich bread recipes have 50 or more reader ratings. A rating count says how many people rated a page, which follows its traffic more than its quality. Against the other 116, medians per 100 g of flour, compared within each language:

On no ingredient do the most-reviewed recipes differ from the rest by more than chance would explain.

50+ ratings (34)the rest (116)middle half of all

  • Liquidthe most-reviewed recipes 63% vs the rest 64%

  • Fatthe most-reviewed recipes 8.8% vs the rest 8%

  • Sugarthe most-reviewed recipes 5.1% vs the rest 4%

  • Saltthe most-reviewed recipes 2% vs the rest 1.8%

  • Yeastthe most-reviewed recipes 1.4% vs the rest 1.3%

Most reviewed

  1. Basic Homemade Bread Recipe Using Yeast · archanaskitchen.com4.9 from 4,051 ratings
  2. Pain de mie au thermomix · cookomix.com · French4.9 from 1,496 ratings
  3. Toastbrot · gutekueche.at · German4.5 from 1,233 ratings
  4. Sandwich Bread · sallysbakingaddiction.com4.9 from 1,185 ratings
  5. The Best White Sandwich Bread · melskitchencafe.com4.7 from 739 ratings

Oven temperature and time

126 of 150 recipes state an oven temperature, and 42% of those bake at 350°F (175°C). The middle half bake at 350 to 400°F. The other 24 do not say.

  • 350°F54 recipes
  • 400°F30 recipes
  • 425°F15 recipes
  • 375°F13 recipes
  • 475°F7 recipes
  • 450°F4 recipes

138 recipes state a bake time. Taking the middle of any stated range (“55 to 65 minutes” counts as 60), the median is 33 minutes and the middle half bake 25 to 40 minutes.

Temperature and time together

The single most common pairing is 350°F for 30 to 35 minutes, with 19 of the 119 recipes that state both.

Rows: oven °F (°C in gray), every 25°F. Columns: minutes, 5 a column, from the start of each; the middle of a stated range counts. Darker: more recipes, up to 19 in one cell. Outlined: the median, 375°F for 31 minutes. 119 recipes state both. The edge rows and columns also hold the few recipes beyond them.

Recipes to start with

Closest to the typical loaf

Nearest the median on every ingredient at once.

Most liquid

Least liquid

All 150 white sandwich bread recipes →

Go deeper

Top sources

  • 8kingarthurbaking.com
  • 7cuisine.journaldesfemmes.fr
  • 7ptitchef.com
  • 6cuisineaz.com
  • 5chainbaker.com
  • 5chefsimon.com
  • 5receiteria.com.br
  • 4bettybossi.ch
  • 4foodnetwork.com
  • 4ichkoche.at
  • 4marmiton.org
  • 3gutekueche.at

In 7 languages: English 66, French 36, German 21, Portuguese 11, Italian 8, Spanish 6, Dutch 2. Lines in other languages are read in their own units and words, and each recipe page links to the original. 83 sites in all. No site contributes more than 12 recipes.

How the numbers are made

Every ingredient line is converted to grams and grouped (butter and oil count as fat; white, brown and liquid sweeteners as sugar), then divided by the flour weight. That baker's percentage is the only comparison that holds across recipes of different sizes.

98% of the 1,165 ingredient lines got a weight. 50% of those weights were printed by the source; the rest were converted from cups and spoons with standard densities, so treat single recipes as close, not exact. Frosting, glaze, streusel and other toppings are listed on each recipe page but left out of the percentages.

A recipe outside the plausible range for any ingredient is left out rather than allowed to stretch every chart; it is usually a different dish with the same name or a misread line. Of the pages fetched, 287 were left out: 101 with a title that names a different dish, 90 outside the plausible range on some ingredient (liquid 36, salt 21, yeast 18, fat 14, sugar 1), 82 with no flour, or none that could be weighed, 10 duplicates of other pages, and 4 too many lines without an amount.

Every recipe page links to the original, which is where the method is. Recipe Lab does not republish instructions or photos.