Perfect Homemade Subway Bread recipe, just like the restaurant. This recipes makes a perfect copycat loaf of Subway bread for sandwiches at home.
I love making homemade bread. It’s easier than you think-try these simple bread recipes: Homemade Italian Bread, Easy Bread Sticks Recipe and Mom’s 4 Loaf Wheat Bread Recipe.
Homemade Subway Bread
You guys, they turned out amazing! Really and truly. Plus, it wasn’t all that hard to do. Next time I’m going to double the recipe so that I have some leftovers and I’m going to try to freeze them. Lucky for me, I found a jar of pickled banana peppers in the pantry too. My sandwich was half banana peppers and half everything else because those are my favorite thing ever.
The homemade Subway bread was just perfect. It had a very soft crust (thanks to a little butter and letting them steam in a towel as they cooled) and a light middle, and it kind of smashed into nothing when you ate it. Just like the real thing. Sure, Subway is cheap, but it’s pretty fun to make them at home. Your family will be shocked and amazed at your mad skills and you’ll be able to put on as many banana peppers as your heart desires. Best deal ever!
Just top with your favorite sandwich toppings and a heavy hand of mayo and you’ll have yourself something ridiculously close to an authentic Subway sandwich made at home. Even if you aren’t craving Subway, this homemade Subway bread recipe is a great one to keep on hand for any future hoagie needs.
Tips and Tricks for making Homemade Subway Bread:
- I have had a few people email me and say that just before baking they brushed the outside of the dough with olive oil or butter and then sprinkled on some Italian seasoning and some Parmesan cheese for a great homemade Subway Italian Herb and Cheese bread. I can’t wait to try this myself.
- This bread froze just about as well as other breads. It was still soft but seemed a bit dryer after freezing. Fresh is best but they do freeze and thaw well.
- Like pickled banana peppers as much as I do? Check out my recipe on how to make easy refrigerated pickled banana peppers (great use for extra garden or farmer’s market produce).
How do I know how much flour to add to bread dough?
If you haven’t ever made dough before, the goal is to add just enough flour for it to be a soft but not sticky dough. If you add too much flour, you’ll end up with Subway bricks instead of bread.
Can I still make homemade bread without a stand mixer?
No stand mixer? This recipe can be made by hand, just be sure to knead it for a full 8 minutes. That’s a long time but developing the gluten helps the bread to be soft.
Can I incorporate whole wheat flour in this bread recipe?
This recipe works well with half whole wheat flour mixed with half all-purpose flour for whole wheat sub buns.
Homemade Subway Bread Recipe
- Prep Time: 1 hr 35 min
- Cook Time: 25 min
- Total Time: 2 hours
- Yield: Makes 4 9-inch sub buns 1x
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Perfect homemade Subway bread recipe, just like the restaurant. This recipe makes a perfect copycat loaf of Subway bread for sandwiches at home.
Ingredients
- 1 cup warm water (110 degrees F)
- 1 tablespoon yeast
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 4 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 1/2 to 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
Instructions
- In the bowl of your stand mixer, add the water, yeast, sugar, salt, and olive oil. Let the mixture stand for 5 minutes.
- Add 1 cup of flour and mix with the dough hook for 3 to 5 minutes. Add an additional cup of flour and mix until well combined. Continue adding the flour, 1/4 cup at a time, until a soft dough is formed. The dough should still stick to the bottom of of the bowl, but pull away from the sides. Let the dough mix for around 8 minutes total.
- When the dough has come together but is still sticking a bit to the bottom of the bowl, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth. The dough should be very soft. Shape the dough into a ball and return it to the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow the dough to rise for a half hour.
- After the dough has risen, turn it out onto a clean surface and divide it into 4. Roll each piece of dough into a long skinny loaf that is about 9 to 10 inches long.
- Place the rolled loaves onto a baking sheet lined with parchment or a baking mat. Repeat with the rest of the dough. Allow at least 2 inches between each loaf on the pan.
- Cover the loaves with a greased piece of plastic wrap and allow the loaves to rise until doubled, about an hour.
- Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. When the loaves are ready, bake them in the preheated oven for 25 minutes.
- When the loaves come out of the oven, rub the tops with a stick of butter and cover them with a dish towel to cool.
- Let the loaves cool for at least 30 minutes before cutting down the middle and topping with your favorite sandwich fixings.
Notes
Rubbing the loaves with butter and covering them with a towel to cool are part of what keeps them very soft, so be sure not to miss those steps.
- Category: Bread
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
Keywords: subway bread recipe, subway copycat recipe, easy hero bread recipe, best sandwich bread recipe, subway bread
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Tried and True Bread Recipes:
- Homemade Cornbread Muffins
- Grandma Lucy’s Famous Clover Rolls
- Jumbo Dinner Rolls
- Whole Wheat Spinach Bread
- Big Soft Pretzels
- Homemade Italian Bread
- Easy Bread Sticks Recipe
- Pineapple Zucchini Bread Recipe
- One Hour Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls
Recipe adapted from Copycat Recipe Guide.
This recipe was originally published in March 2013 and republished in July 2017 with new pictures, new text, and an updated based on retesting and reader feedback. Enjoy!
NOTE: One of the awesome Bless this Mess readers, Kim, had great success using her bread machine to make this recipe. Since so many have asked about that I thought I would share her notes. Kim said that she let the bread machine run the full dough cycle (which is 1.5 hours long). After the cycle she shaped the loaves and let them rise for an hour before baking. Here’s how Kim’s homemade sub bun turned out:
Thank you for sharing Kim! I hope that helps someone else out too.
Enjoy this perfect Homemade Subway Bread recipe, just like the restaurant. This recipes makes a perfect copycat loaf of Subway bread for sandwiches at home.
About Melissa
Melissa is deticated to helping parents figure out the nightly questions, "What's for Dinner?!" with her no-fuss approach to cooking. Read more...
Grandma’s Quick Pickled Cucumbers – Refrigerator Pickles
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Thank you for this wonderful recipe. I wanted to make parmesan garlic rolls, so I added the seasonings to the tops as your tip seemed to direct, but found that in doing so, the rolls deflated a bit. (They still tasted DELICIOUS)
I am going to try again, this time adding the extra step after rolling out the lengths but BEFORE rising them the last time…and I think I will try clarified butter instead of oil, to get the tops to brown a bit more.
★★★★★
Ohhh the butter sounds amazing!
Oh thank you soooooo much… i use a very simple halogen oven which i have been using for more than 10yrs and every time i bake breads… the top crust will have a knock knock sort of hard crust on it(tho the bread inside will be soft)… i thought it must be because of my oven which is very small… always wanted the big once but cud never afford… i tried as u said ….the butter and wrapping it in towel finally did the trick!!! oh my god the hard crust became sooooooo soft… thank you dear… thanks so much for the help!!!!
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First, 1 cup of water is too much for 2/34 cups of flour. That amount makes a batter not a dough. But to get a soft roll you do need high hydration in the dough. You will find that you need to add more flour then stated. Only add 1/4 cup at a time just until the dough no longer sticks to the sides of the bowl. And is tacky to the touch, but not sticky! I have been baking breads for over 30 years. You just have to get the feel and look for the dough. Adding too much flour and you will have a brick not bread. Also, to get a soft crust, after baking allow to cool a few minutes and then place the loafs into a covered Tupperware container to finish cooling. Hope this helps.
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Don, you must on something or misread something somewhere, this recipe doesnt come close to ‘making a batter’. Did it seem weird to you at all when posting this comment you were literally the ONLY person with this complaint in the 7 years its been up? Perhaps go mansplain breadmaking somewhere else? Thanks
★★★★
I agree with Don. I found that starting with 3 cups flour and adding more from there is what I needed to do. All in all, it took about 3.5 cups flour and I still whish I had added a little more to my bread maker. When I went to roll the loaves it was a touch sticky.
Other than that, I loved the buns it made and am making more today per request from my hubby!!
tasty bread, but it wasnt soft when it came out of the oven. is it supposed to have a crust? (was a bit like baguette). i did use rapid yeast, which said not to bloom in water. but i dont think thats the problem because it did rise
i want ot make subway at home – how can i get that soft exterior?
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Did you cover it with a towel so that it rested in it’s own steam?
I will be making this bread this weekend! Just curious… what type of yeast did you use? Would it better to use rapid (quick) rise yeast?
I use instant yeast!
Rapid and instant are the same thing
I cannot get anything right that takes yeast. I made these tonight. I’ll post a picture later
It looks like a packet of yeast is less than 1 TBS. do you usually use a couple of packet?
Rapid rise and instant are not really the same thing. Instant is basically active dry milled to finer grain and formulated to not need proofing. It is suitable for multiple rises of long overnight ferment in fridge.
Rapid rise is formulated to do just that, rise rapidly. It is for breads with a quick single rise, but not multiple rises or long ferment.
Btw, excellent recipe, I use it often.
for more info see SeriousEats
Thank you!
Must olive oil be used or can I sub grapeseed or veg oil? Do you use extra virgin olive oil or just regular olive oil? Thank you in advance for your attention.
I cannot wait until the weather cools down to make these. Average daily temp here is 110 degrees this time of year, so I try not to use the oven.
The oil isn’t that picky, you can use what you like or have on hand!
I am making this now and it is in its first rise. I don’t see anything in the directions for punching the dough down aftet the rise…am i missing anything?
By not punching it down, you leave more air in the dough. I don’t normally punch my dough down for that reason.
This did not work out well at all; it was just very bubbly and flat – perhaps from the yeast? Can you offer some advice because I was desperate for these for lunch and now I’m feeling super deflated…
★★
Hmmm. Yes, do you know if your yeast was fresh? And sometime if your water is too hot it can kill your fresh yeast.
Amy, you didn’t mention which rise was flat and bubbly. If the first rise was ok, it wasn’t the yeast and you probably over-warmed the second rise or you made the fatal mistake of covering the buns with something that stuck to them and caused them to collapse. I use parchment paper but frankly haven’t found any compelling; reason to cover the rises at all other than to keep the flies off, lol.
If the problem happened in the first rise, then, as Melissa suggested, you probably overheated the yeast on proofing. Just keep everything barely warm and DON’T cover your rises with a damp tea towel or you will end up with not only a deflated bun but also a deflated ego and, even worse, a McDonald’s burger for lunch!!
Hi Amy, I’ve not made these before, but something similar. This recipe looks like the dough will be much too moist to hold it’s own shape without the use of an appropriately shaped pan. I would suggest either using a shaped pan, or adding more much more flour, mixing it in a 1/4 to 1/2 cup at a time.
As a reference, when I make regular white bread using a pan, I’m mixing 1.5 cups of liquid to 4+ cups of flour, and even that’s not stiff enough to hold its own shape.
I made these 2 nights ago and they held shape just fine..I did knead the dough by hand and added MAYBE an extra 1/4 cup of flour, if that, to prevent the dough from sticking to my hand while kneading, but perhaps you should try actually making the recipe first before putting up a critique.
I made these yesterday and was very happy with the results. One caution — I doubled the batch using the calculator included with the recipe. The calculator doubles all the numbers in the recipe, including the temperature of the warm water. This could be a problem for a beginning baker.
★★★★★
I was about to say something. I tripled the batch and got 330 degrees… For the beginner baker or less experienced, making this this recipe anything over 120 degree water will likely kill your yeast. especially if you follow the doubled or tripled temperatures. Just make sure your water is between 100 and 110 degrees and you will be fine.
Are you using fresh yeast or active dry?
Active dry
I’ve used this recipe several times and it’s a winner!
★★★★★
I am unable to get browned subs, otherwise they taste perfect! Any tips?
★★★★★
You can brush them with an egg white mixed with 1 tablespoon of water before baking to improve the color if you’d like.
To brown the buns preheat the oven to 400F, then turn down to 375F (so the burners don’t come on while baking) and bake the buns UNCOVERED for about 8 minutes. Then reduce heat to 350F, COVER the buns with foil and bake another 8 minutes. Then turn off the oven and leave in for a final 6 minutes.
I haven’t tried this particular recipe but I’ve used this browning method for 30 years and it works every time. For a typical bread loaf, increase the baking times to 12/12/8.
Happy baking!
Yep yep. I do the same thing. My aunt who was the old fashioned houswife from the 1940s on did the same thing and taught me to do this as well. I have never had a non browned peoduct yet.