Homemade Subway Bread Recipe
on Apr 18, 2022, Updated Apr 02, 2024
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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, makes the house smell amazing, and provides that little extra something for your meal. Plus I can put on as many banana peppers as my heart desires, so I’ll also be making up a batch of easy refrigerated pickled banana peppers, too.
The homemade Subway bread was just perfect. It had a very soft crust (thanks to a little butter and letting it steam in a towel as it cooled) and a light middle, and it kind of smashed into nothing when you ate it. Just like the real thing.
Your family will be shocked and amazed at your mad skills, and you can wow them with an amazing cheese steak sandwich served on this perfect sandwich bread. Mom for the win!
Table of Contents
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Soft crust and light as air in the middle – a perfect replica of Subway bread
- This is a great recipe to keep on hand for any future hoagie needs
- A simple bread recipe with basic ingredients you’ll likely find in your pantry
Recipe Ingredients
- Yeast – If buying yeast in the packets, you’ll need to open two to measure out the amount needed for this recipe
- Sugar – Plain old sugar to make the yeast happy!
- Olive oil
- All-purpose flour
See the recipe card below for full information on ingredients and quantities.
Popular Variation: Italian Herb & Cheese 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 on any number of creative sandwich recipes!
How to Make Homemade Subway Bread
- Mix wet ingredients with all dry ingredients except the flour. Let the mixture stand for 5 minutes.
- Add 1 cup of flour and mix for 3 to 5 minutes. Add an additional cup of flour and mix well, and then add rest of flour a little at a time, until a soft dough is formed. Knead until smooth.
- Place the dough in a bowl and cover. Allow to rise and then shape into 4 rolls, allowing these to rise again.
- Bake at 350 for 25 minutes, brushing with butter and covering when they come out of the oven.
Recipe FAQs
If you haven’t ever made a simple bread recipe 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.
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.
This recipe works well with half whole wheat flour mixed with half all-purpose flour for whole wheat sub buns.
Expert Tips
- 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.
- Do not skip rubbing with butter and covering the bread with a towel to cool. This is the key to the texture of this awesome bread!
- One of the awesome Bless this Mess readers, Kim, had great success using her bread machine to make this recipe. 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.
More Amazing Bread Recipes to Consider
Yeasted Breads
Brioche Bread
Yeasted Breads
Challah Bread
Yeasted Breads
Cinnamon Babka
Yeasted Breads
Chocolate Babka
Did you make this recipe? Leave a STAR review and share it on Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest!
Homemade Subway Bread Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup warm water, (110 degrees F)
- 1 tablespoon instant 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
- If you don’t have a stand mixer, just mix the flour in a bit at a time, kneading very well after it’s all incorporated.
- Add seasonings to the dough to change it up, like garlic powder or Italian seasonings.
- Instead of shaping the dough into loaves for Hoagie-style bread, make it into whatever shapes of sandwich rolls your family likes. Note that smaller shapes may need a shorter baking time.
What type of yeast? Regular, rapid rise, or instant rise?
Instant or regular will be fine in this recipe.
I’ve made these three times now, and perfect results have ensued each time. Thank you for a wonderful recipe that is easy to follow and that has such great results!
Hooray for a great review! Thank you for coming back to share your success with us!
In the oven right now and the smell is amazing!! How long will they stay fresh?
About like normal baked good, a few days. For long storage wrap well and keep in the freezer!
Allow the dough to rise for half an hour and allow the finished loaves to proof for an hour, and the recipe still says an hour and fifteen minutes total time at the top. I mean, I bake all the time and know full well bread takes well over 2 hours. But it never fails to amaze me how these recipes don’t even try to estimate the actual total time.
luv to try yur recipe
Great recipe! I was very dubious about the amount of yeast (for that quantity of flour I would normally use 1/2 TEASPOON) but having read other comments I thought I’d go with it and see how things turned out. I used 50% strong white bread flour and 50% whole wheat bread flour and just put all the ingredients in my bread-maker on the whole wheat/dough setting. Boy did it rise! Knocking back and shaping was interesting but using oiled hands was a great tip. The shaped dough was as bit uneven but too wet for me to mess around with it further, but by the time it had proved the worst of the bumps had evened out. My baguette tray only holds three, so I made three 12 inch subs and the result was excellent. Using a block of butter rather than faffing around with melted butter to glaze after baking was also a good tip. The subs turned out really soft and my wife much preferred them to the harder rolls I usually manage to make. We had one each with grilled bacon and melted camambert, which was far too much, but the bread was fresh and once the pack of bacon is open you have to eat it all, don’t you? I put the third sub in a plastic bag and it was just as nice the next day. I’ll try this again with 100% white flour, and I also want to try with about 1 tablespoon of yeast to see the difference that makes., but this is definatlet a recipe I will use again and again. Thanks you Melissa.
Thank you SO much for the long helpful review. Let us know if you make any changes and how it goes for you, I’m always learning too!
This is the best loaf. I made it half wheat, half white and added some Italian seasoning for our meatball subs. It was perfect. Very soft and light.
Made this twice now. My kids and husband love it so much they want it on the weekly menu. ?❤️
That’s so fun! Thank you for leaving a comment to tell me, that means a lot to me.
Remove bread from freezer, thaw, place in microwave 5-7 seconds, [times may vary according to microwave,] it will seem oven fresh again.
Thank you for letting us know that that worked well!
Looks yummy. Going to try ut soon