This gluten-free sourdough sandwich bread is made with just four ingredients: flour, sourdough starter, water, and salt. It bakes into a loaf that slices cleanly without crumbling. If you want a reliable sourdough bread that behaves like sandwich bread, this method keeps the crumb soft, the structure stable, and the flavor naturally tangy without commercial yeast.
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I made this bread last night with Bob’s Redmill GF all purpose flour with my GF starter & it came out amazing!! So happy I found this recipe & can’t wait to make it again!! This recipe was very easy to follow & the tips were very helpful.
wendy, blog comment
🔑 Sandi says: This post was updated and reorganized from an older 2014 post. I included a lot more tips from myself and readers to help you make this recipe successfully. This is a recipe that I recommend you read the entire post.
There is nothing better than the taste of fresh sourdough bread! It is seriously (or should I say Srsly) the most incredible comfort food! This original recipe comes from Sadie, founder of the famous Bread Srsly in San Francisco. Please note this is not her current recipe; she has tweaked it over the years, but it turns out incredibly well. (I have also streamlined this recipe since she first shared her recipe with me back in 2014.)
Sadie used a combination of millet, sorghum, brown, and white rice flour in her original recipe. Many of us don’t have a lot of individual flours on hand…so it was important for me to simplify the ingredients. This is an excellent introduction if you want to try making a version of Bread Srsly’s famous sourdough bread.
If you’re looking for more gluten-free bread recipes that rise well and slice beautifully, you’ll find plenty of options in my Ultimate Guide to Gluten-Free Bread Recipes.
If you love baking gluten free bread as much as we do, check out my delicious gluten-free bread recipes.
Do This First:
Go to my How to Make a Gluten-Free Sourdough Starter page and make your gluten free starter! Do this first because there is no sourdough bread without an active starter!! For a list of tools you need, please read my article on Sourdough Tools.
A Note on Gluten-Free Flour Blends:
I have tested several different gluten free blends. I talk a lot about King Arthur Measure for Measure, which is a standard blend. I also used a very starch-heavy gluten free flour blend by GF Jules. Both performed very well.
The main difference is the texture of the bread on the inside. Both had a nice crusty outside. GF Jules was much lighter and fluffier on the inside, while the King Arthur flour blend loaf was a little more hearty, like regular sourdough bread.
Many of my readers have chimed in with different flour blends they have tried in the comments, so I encourage you to keep reading through everyone’s comments. Dana loved Bob’s Red Mill 1 to 1 Gluten Free Blend with this recipe.
How to Make Gluten-Free Sourdough Sandwich Bread (Step-By-Step)
We are finally ready to make this gluten-free sourdough bread loaf! Are you as excited as I am?
Step 1: You will need 3/4 cup of gluten free starter. Make sure it is bubbling and at room temperature! If you refrigerate your starter, take it out of the refrigerator the night before you plan to make bread. I take a discard, feed it with gluten-free flour and water, and let it sit on the counter overnight.
You will want your starter warmer if it is a cold season, especially winter. I like to put my starter either in the oven with the light on or on my Euro Cuisine Yogurt Maker base (with two folded dish towels on it so the starter doesn’t get too hot).
Step 2: Place the gluten-free flour and salt in a large mixing bowl and whisk to combine. Add the sourdough starter and filtered water.
Why Water Quality Is Important:
I always use purified water when making sourdough or baking with yeast. Chlorine and chemicals in our tap water can kill your yeast and inhibit the rise. To achieve the best rise, use purified water that doesn’t contain these chemicals.
Step 3: Mix the wet and dry ingredients well. You want wet dough, like a thick pancake batter.
Step 4: Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let the dough rise for 3 hours (go by how big it rises). I then gently move the dough to a greased bread loaf pan and let it sit for another 3-4 hours. If you are not using a metal pan, you can do the whole rise in the bread pan!! Cover with a damp towel to prevent the dough from drying out.
This is my favorite option so far – let it rise in the pan you’ll use for baking and it has the softest crust and best crumb of the four 5 recipes I’ve tried, while still being super easy.”
Sara K.
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Note that the King Arthur Measure for Measure was a little runnier in consistency. The GF Jules has a much higher starch content and looks much fluffier!
Step 5: Bake the gluten free sourdough loaf for 45 minutes at 425º F. I noticed it hadn’t browned on top, so I brushed the top with melted butter at the 45-minute mark and then quickly closed the oven door.
Hurry when gently brushing the melted butter on- the longer the oven is open, and the rack is pulled out a bit, the more it will lose a tiny bit of its rise. Once the oven is closed again, the rise comes back quickly.
Step 6: Bake for another 30 minutes and test the bread with a probe-style thermometer showing 210º F in the center. Note: the baking time will vary depending on the size and depth of the pan you bake your bread in.
Serve this with my Curried Chicken Salad, Unstuffed Pepper Soup, or Instant Pot Chicken Vegetable Soup.
If you notice residue on the thermometer probe, turn off the oven and leave the loaf in to cool, so it finishes baking and cooling more gently and retains as much of the final baked-in rise and fluff.
Step 7: Carefully move the bread to a cooling rack. Cool the bread completely before removing it from the pan and slicing it with a serrated bread knife. You want the bread to cool for at least 3-4 hours before slicing.
Read my Gluten-Free Bread Troubleshooting Guide for more tips and possible troubleshooting.
How to get crusty bread:
If you love crusty bread, try this artisan Gluten-Free Sourdough Boule recipe! I also love this Gluten-Free Cranberry Walnut Sourdough Bread.
I highly recommend baking this bread with a pan of hot water to create steam. Sadie at Bread Srsly didn’t do this, but I found baking with hot steam creates a really good crust to the bread.
To generate steam, fill a shallow baking dish with very hot water and place it on the bottom rack when you turn on the oven. Keep it there for the first hour your bread bakes.
You can also bake your sourdough in a Dutch oven. Keep the lid on for the first 30 minutes of baking.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Store it the right way! Learn How to Store Gluten-Free Bread so you can keep it fresh.
No, regular sourdough is not gluten free because it is made with wheat flour. If you are gluten free, you need to use gluten free flour to make your starter and bread.
If you want to speed up your rise slightly, add 1-2 teaspoons of sugar. Many of my readers have used 1 teaspoon of soda powder mixed in. I added 1 teaspoon of sugar to the GF Jules mix before adding it to the bread loaf tin, and it seems to have risen higher and kept the rise through baking better.
In the early days of gluten free baking, there were few choices in flour or blends. Many people didn’t know Bob’s 1:1 wasn’t recommended for yeast recipes, so they used it. Bob’s 1:1 does work in this recipe. Why not, given that so many readers use it successfully?
Reader Tips:
I am including many reader tips. There is so much experience in perfecting bread. I encourage you to read the tips and comments section.
It was a pleasure at each step- because it was an adventure. Not everyone is that enthusiastic, I know. But, for someone whom has zero experience in gluten free baking – this brave trial was easy and enjoyable.”
Dana
I am new to gf sourdough bread baking, and each loaf is improving. Only the first was a complete fail due to stickyness. I mix my dough in the a.m., and mid afternoon, I mix a 2 T. boost of flour, 1/4 c. of water and 1 tsp of baking soda, add that into the dough and move the dough into my loaf pan for a fairly quick rise. I bake at 400F for an hour after dinner for use the next day. I check temp with a probe for 200+F. I don’t use steam and crust is cruchy/chewy. I’ve used center of oven and low center without noticing a difference. Some tips that may work – fluff flour with fork before measuring, and mix with a fork, too. You can cover your loaf pan with a second for the ride to allow room and protect. Some bake like this to simulate a Dutch oven, but I’ve not tried it yet. If I use the baking soda, it really helps the rise and opens the grain. Otherwise it is fairly sense and short. I am wondering how to reduce stickyness more. I am thinking a different flour may help. I have been using WalMart GF All Purpose and BRM in the red bag. Both have some starches. I usually toast my bread slice and that dried them a bit, too. This has been a fun adventure, and we’ve enjoyed discard pancakes, too.
Chris, reader comment
I successfully babied a sorghum starter for several weeks feeding it regularly and discarding only occasionally until it matured. I have found the process to be not as finicky as it is usually presented and is quite forgiving. I have since made 4 successful loaves of various kinds of gluten free bread, baking once a week and keeping my sourdough in the refrigerator during the week, bringing it out the night before I plan on using it and feeding it. I always make mine with a stand mixer and beat it for 3-4 mins before putting it into a loaf pan forming it with a wet silicone spatula. I always use bottled or spring water in my recipes as chlorine inhibits the yeast growth, therefore living sourdough. If I am in a hurry to bake, I add 1 tsp of baking sofa to my loaf. It reacts with the acidic sourdough and causes a faster rise. If I am not, I practise patience…not my finest asset! Sometimes rise may take anywhere from 12-48 hrs for the dough to double in size. Because I live in the great white north, I also always put my bread in the oven with the light on to rise. I oil the top of my loaf lightly with olive oil and place a kitchen towel over it. Once it is fully risen I remove it from the oven and heat my oven to 450. I put the loaf in and then decrease the temperature to 420 for 20 mins. This gives a beautiful chewy crust. Then I decrease my oven again to 375-400F and bake for 30 minutes until the interior loaf measures above 205F. Let it cool completely before slicing up the loaf. Store in the freezer taking out what you will use, defrosting in the microwave until warm. This recipe makes fantastic sandwiches! I use this method with all the loaves I have made and it works great! Hope this helps!
Lois M., reader comment
We’ve accidentally left out the salt a few times at the bakery, and we found that the bread did not rise as much as a salted dough! It was really interesting, and not at all in line with the baking rules I know. The key to getting your recipe down is the balance between water, binder, and bake time. Too little water means the dough can’t stretch enough to take full advantage of the binder. Too little binder, and the water will just make it harder to bake, with less rise because there isn’t enough elasticity. Too low a bake temp means that the amount of oven spring will be small.
Sadie, responding to a reader question about salt
I make mine in a crock pot! I line to crock with oiled parchement and let raise 12-24 hours. Cook on high for 2.5 hours. The top doesn’t brown and isn’t pretty, but it still tastes the same as baking it. Plus it doesn’t heat up my kitchen in the summer!”
Jill H., Pinterest comment
Serve Gluten-Free Sourdough Bread With:
If you haven’t eaten a lot of sourdough bread or are looking for some ideas on what to serve it with, here are a few tasty ideas:
- Roasted Chicken – Place pieces of roasted chicken and cheese (if you can tolerate dairy) and toss them under the broiler until hot and the cheese is bubbly. Add toppings and enjoy. So good!
- Bread Crumbs – You can dry the loaf of sourdough bread and turn it into bread crumbs. It will go lovely in any recipe that requires breadcrumbs. Try this delicious Gluten-Free Meatloaf recipe!
- Dip – Serve pieces of gluten free sourdough with this Hot Cream Cheese Dip, which will go perfectly! It pairs well with any cheese-based dish.
If you love gluten free bread, you will want to try these Gluten-Free Cheddar Herb Muffins recipes, too. They are so light and fluffy. Also, these Paleo Biscuits are delicious and perfect for anyone who needs to be grain-free!
Sadie’s Original Recipe:
Here is the recipe that Sadie gave me back in 2014, untweaked. Several readers still use this recipe, so I wanted to include it in my article. This is the quote from Sadie, who used a millet, rice, and sorghum flour blend. The salt and xanthan gum are not used in the starter but in the bread:
- Mix equal parts of the flour of your choice and water. Avoid using pure starches like tapioca, corn, or potato starch.
- Leave it in a bowl at room temperature, covered by a towel. Add a little more flour and a little more water every 8-12 hours (2-3 times per day).
- After 3-5 days, the mixture should begin to smell sour and develop bubbles. Congratulations, you’re almost there.
- Once your mixture is bubbling, add a little bit to your bread mix. Do not use any yeast. Let this rise for at least 12 hours.
- Once the dough has risen, it will be your sourdough starter! Use a little bit of this dough in a fresh batch of dough.
- You’ll be impressed at how vigorous your sourdough can be.
- Always save a cup or so of your last dough to use as a starter in your next batch.
- Keep it in the fridge, and be sure to “feed” it with fresh water and your blend of flour from the bread recipe at least once a week, but twice if you can.
If you want to try another great sourdough recipe, give this Gluten-Free Sourdough Bagels recipe a try! If you want to make incredible gluten free bread quicker, try my delicious Gluten-Free Bread Machine Bread recipe! If you have discard to use up, try my Gluten-Free Sourdough Discard Biscuit recipe!
Love This Recipe?
If you made and enjoyed this recipe, I would be incredibly grateful if you could leave a comment below. Please include which flour blend you used. This will help others know this recipe is delicious. Thank you!
Gluten Free Sourdough Sandwich Bread
Ingredients
- 2 cups gluten free flour blend * see note
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- ¾ cup sourdough starter
- 1 cup water by feel You will need more or less depending on the flour blend you use.
Instructions
Do This First:
- PLEASE read the whole recipe post I wrote about making this gluten free sourdough sandwich bread because it is loaded with tips from me and other readers. It is impossible to put them all in this recipe card.
- Go to my How to Make a Gluten Free Sourdough Starter page and make your gluten free starter! Do this first because there is no sourdough bread without an active starter!!
Make The Bread:
- You will need ¾ cup sourdough starter. Make sure it is bubbling and at room temperature! If you refrigerate your starter, take it out of the refrigerator the night before you plan to make bread. I take a discard, feed it with gluten-free flour and water, and let it sit on the counter overnight.
- You will want your starter warmer if it is a cold season, especially winter. I like to put my starter either in the oven with the light on or on my Euro Cuisine Yogurt Maker base (with two folded dish towels on it so the starter doesn't get too hot.)
- Put the 2 cups gluten free flour blend and 1 teaspoon kosher salt into a large non-metal mixing bowl and whisk together. Add the sourdough starter and 1 cup water by feel.
- Note: It is important to use filtered water. Tap water has a lot of chemicals, including chlorine, which can kill your yeast and decrease the rise.
- Mix the wet and dry ingredients well. You want a wet dough, like a thick pancake batter.
- If your bowl isn't metal, cover it loosely with plastic wrap and let the dough rise for 3 hours (go by how big it rises). It may look lumpy, but that is okay. Let it- don’t overwork- you are eliminating the rise with every stroke. I move the dough to a greased bread loaf pan and let it rise for another 3-4 hours. Cover with a damp towel so the dough doesn't dry out.
- Note that the King Arthur Measure for Measure was a little runnier in consistency. The GF Jules has a much higher starch content and looks much fluffier!
- Bake the gluten free sourdough loaf for 45 minutes at 425º F. I noticed it hadn’t browned on top – so I brushed the top with melted butter at the 45-minute mark and then quickly closed the oven door.
- Bake for another 20-30 minutes and test the bread with a probe-style thermometer. The bread should be between 200-210º F in the center. Note: the bake time will vary depending on the size and depth of the pan you bake your bread in.
- Carefully move the bread to a cooling rack. Cool the bread completely before removing it from the pan and slicing it with a serrated bread knife. You want the bread to cool for a minimum of 3-4 hours before slicing it.
Notes
- Read the entire post. You will miss a lot of tips and tricks in making this recipe a huge success.
- I have tested this recipe with King Arthur Measure for Measure and GF Jules blends. Readers have tested this recipe with Nameste, Krusteaz, and Bob’s Red Mill 1:1.
- Note this is a recipe that came from Sadie at Bread Srsly. She has many tips in the article and 100s of reader comments filled with tips.
- Store the bread in an airtight container. I always recommend slicing and freezing the bread slices if you are not going to eat the loaf quickly. Freeze when the bread is fully cooled in a freezer-safe zipper bag.
How to get crusty bread:
I highly recommend baking this bread with a pan of hot water on the lower rack in the oven to create steam. (Sadie at Bread Srsly didn’t do this, but I found baking with hot steam creates a really good crust to the bread.) To get steam, you can fill a shallow baking dish with very hot water and put it on the bottom rack in your oven when you turn the oven on. Keep it there the first 30 minutes that your bread bakes.Email This Recipe To Me!
I will email this recipe to you, so you can come back to it later!
SPECIAL NOTE
Please know that every gluten free flour blend has a different starch to grain ratio. If you use a blend I didn’t test, my rule of thumb is to add more flour if your dough or batter is wet and add more liquid if the dough or batter is too dry!
Nutrition
Nutrition Disclaimer
Nutritional information is an estimate provided to you as a courtesy. You should calculate the actual nutritional information with the products and brands you are using with your preferred nutritional calculator.
I truly hope you enjoy this recipe. I have been testing and creating gluten-free recipes for over 15 years. Creating gluten-free recipes that do not taste gluten-free is my goal for every recipe. Sometimes I only have to test a new recipe a couple of times, and others it takes multiple times. I do this so you get reliable, delicious results every time!
I’m late to the party here but hope someone can provide some insight. I put my “pancake batter” into a 9X5 glass loaf pan. It is currently rising in a lit oven. I am trying to decide if I can just bake Elias risen or…do I have to transfer to another loaf pan before baking. Transferring and potentially losing some leavening seems like an unnecessary step. Can it just be baked?
I haven’t tested your idea to just bake it at that stage so I am unsure how to advise you on your questions. If you do try it, please come back and let us know if it worked.
i have this rising today as i made it last night. It seems like a sticky kind of play dough. I added more water last night but it was just like a muddy sludge. Hoping it rises today and bakes well!
Please do keep me posted. A recent commenter listed her step by step process for making this bread, it is worth looking at what she says about the dough.
Hey People! If you have used arrowroot flour in your bread and allowed the batter to then rise, then Stuckey or even gooey is your fate; you can bake it forever and it will be like crusty sludge. Arrowroot is so hydrophilic that it is a water magnet and almost impossible to dry out. If baking with arrowroot you need to mix and bake IMMEDIATELY to have good results, so it is more suited to cakes and muffins, in combination with, say, coconut flour or brown rice and buckwheat. Good luck.
When making this bread it is alive. Regular tap water with chlorine if used will kill the good bacteria / yeast resulting in no rise / use distilled water when working with live foods
It would be great if you could give an internal temperature for the bread when it is ‘done.’ I baked mine for an hour, and discovered it really wasn’t cooked all the way through. So having an internal temp to check would be great. Thanks.
Hi Laurel, this is a guest post by Sadie, so I am not sure what an internal temperature she would recommend. Sadie checks in on this post and I am hoping she can answer this question for you.
Minimum is 205 degrees internal temperature. Often 210 is better.
Thank you Lisa!!
Hi there,
INTRO:
I’m not Celiac but quite sensitive to Gluten and Wheat especially, with bloating and severe water gain and swelling. Still being very new at Gluten Free home baking, I chose to attempt this recipe using Bob’s Red Mill One to One GF Baking Flour(R). Silly me, didn’t read the fine print of the ingredients, so I found later that there is some Tapioca and Potato starch in the product. Well- the worst that could happen is the starter wouldn’t rise and behave correctly. A whole bag of flour wouldn’t be wasted, just the bit that I used for starter.
STARTER for a new GF Baker:
I chose to begin the Starter with 1/4 C of 1 to 1 Bob’s with 1/4 C of Water in a mason jar. I left the lid ajar for air. I did notice that this didn’t work as well as a loose cotton dish towel over the jar, instead of the lid. Once using the towel instead of the lid, I believe ambient yeast collected more easily and I began to “get a rise” out of the starter. Sorry for being so detailed, but being new at GF baking, I’m attempting to offer as much info in my steps – to help someone else troubleshoot their baking experience of this recipe.
MIXING up my First Batch
Instead of going exactly by the recipe – I continued to use Bob’s Red Mill 1 to 1 in exchange for all the flours listed. All of those flours and the arrowroot is included in the 1 to 1 Baking flour – thus the reason for this choice. Also- I was attempting to find the most economical way of baking this bread. Measurements I kept the same – so instead of 1/2 C of each flour plus the arrowroot powder – I used 2 cups of the 1 to 1 baking flour, the Salt (Pink Himalayan Sea Salt) the Xanthene Gum and the water until I had a decent consistency of a medium thick Pancake batter. I used the Kitchenaid metal mixing bowl and covered loosely with the cotton kitchen towel for a full 24 hours. I did this because at 12 hours- it hadn’t seem to rise to it’s full potential.. At about 18 hours, there was a full-doubling rise, so kept it going for any best rise possible.
BAKING my First Loaf:
I didn’t have shortening to grease with – but I did have cruelty-free obtained coconut/palm oils-so I used that on a new non-stick metal 1 lb. loaf pan and coated well using a basting brush. Don’t overwork the “batter”. Fold it in the greased pan and let it settle on it’s own while preheating the oven. It will look lumpy. Let it- don’t overwork- for every stroke- you are eliminating the Rise. The flour mixture that I used had White and Brown rice flour and so more water was used to get that Pancake consistency before baking. I baked at 375* F(also measured with baking thermometer) on middle rack of the oven. I baked for 50 minutes, then turned on the oven light to closely monitor for the last minutes of baking. Also at this time, I noticed it hadn’t browned on top – so I brushed the top with my coconut/palm oil mixture for the last 10 minutes, hoping it would brown up a bit. I’m sure butter would work beautifully as well. Hurry when gently brushing it on- the longer the oven is open and rack pulled out a bit – will lose a tiny bit of it’s Rise. Once oven is closed again, the Rise came quickly back. Baked for the full 60 minutes and then with a Probe style Roasting Thermometer showing 160-180*F in the center. I did notice that it had a bit of residue on the probe- so I turned off the oven and left the loaf in to cool that way, hoping to finish baking and cooling more gently to keep as much of the final Baked in Rise and fluff. Cooled completely before removing from pan and slicing with a serrated bread knife.
CONCLUSION:
I’ve tried a lot of GF breads – the online, the super pricey, down to the cheap or clearanced (aka cardboard tasting). As an Artisan sourdough bread fan – I have to say the experience of starter, mixing, baking and finally eating it – the trouble I went to was well worth it. It was a pleasure at each step- because it was an adventure. Not everyone is that enthusiastic, I know. But, for someone whom has Zero experience in GF Baking – this brave trial was easy and enjoyable.
TASTING: WOW! Quite authentic Sourdough Bread flavor. Doesn’t toast up Brown as easily as it’s Gluten filled relative, but I’m very pleased with the results, the RISE, and flavor. I can finally have Sandwiches again after 3 years of going without buns, rolls and deserts because wheat and gluten were giving my stomach and body such fits.
I know this was long winded – I hope it helps and encourages others to try as well.
Good luck and enjoy!!
Dana
Wow! Dana you are so wonderful to come and comment with such full directions to help other readers. Thank you so much!! I am hopeful that your encouragement will help people who are newer to gluten free baking to try this recipe.
Hi
Are you able to put up a conversion to grams please? I have all sorts of trouble trying to figure out if you firmly pack the cup measurements or if you are using metric cup measurements or something else. (new to sourdough baking?
Thank you.
Hi Raylene, Unfortunately, this isn’t my recipe it is Sadie’s and I am not familiar enough with grams to reliably convert this recipe. You may consider finding an online converter.
I’m sorry, I am confused. How is this yeast free? A wild starter is yeast, its just ambient yeast that is collected from the air rather than a commercial, packaged yeast, but its still yeast.
Hi Alison, I can try to ask Sadie for you since this is her recipe.
I tried twice to make this bread and it came out great except it did not rise much . We have toasted it and it is truly a winner, however I would love to find out why it did not rise as much ? maybe more water ? does it really have to have the consistency of pancake batter before I let it rise ? that’s pretty wet, right ???
My first thought is to try more water. Sadie gave this recipe, and she wanted people to use it as a base to experiment from. Please let us know if more water helps.
I made this bread today with a brown rice flour/water starter. It rose well while baking. I baked it for over an hour, but the top did not brown. Any suggestions?
Hi Tammy, this isn’t my recipe, so I am not fully sure why the top didn’t brown. Sadie occasionally stops by to see the post and will add comments for readers. I am hoping she will see your question and respond back.
Can I use glass pans or do they have to be metal? (Love SRSLY bread 🙂
Hi Amy, That is a great question. I am not sure but I believe Sadie uses metal baking tins.