Homemade Subway Bread Recipe
on Jul 13, 2017, Updated Aug 21, 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
Homemade Bread
100% Whole Wheat Bread Recipe
Homemade Bread
Soft Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread
Yeast Bread Recipes
Brioche Bread
Yeast Bread Recipes
Challah Bread
Did you make this recipe? Leave a ⭐️ review and share it on Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest!
Homemade Subway Bread Recipe
Equipment
- baking sheet These are a go-to that every kitchen should have.
- KitchenAid stand mixer This classic KitchenAid always gets the job done!
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.
When shaping the dough out to 9-10 inch lengths, how wide/thin should you make them?
The length will dictate the width, but they’ll be roughly 2.5 inches wide.
Truly amazing! I used to work in Subway but after 4 years of leaving it, I wanted to make the same at home and it worked perfectly! Thank you
Can I use whole wheat flour?
Yes! You’ll probably have the best luck using 1/3 to 1/2 bread flour with the whole wheat though.
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!!!!
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.
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!!
That is not too much water at all, Don. When I make pizza dough, I will make it with 60-70% hydration. I usually use around 400 grams of 00 flour with 240-280 ml of water. The hydration ratio of this dough, that uses AP flour which is heavier than 00, is close to that. This certainly does not make anything close to a batter, just a typical high hydration dough which as you say yourself, is required to get a soft roll.
The only problem I have with the recipe is that all the measurements should be given as weights in grams, not in volume measurements or at least in addition to the volume measurements. If weights were included, this would be a 5 star in my book.
A little tip: Weigh your dough ball before dividing it. Cut it in two and weigh each half to see how close you have it. If both are within a few grams, cut each in two and weigh them again and if you balance them all out, you will end up with 4 equal sized buns.
If you find yourself making these on a regular basis, I recommend picking up a French bread or baguette pan. You can find them made from metal or silicon on Amazon for under $20, and they will help you turn out beautiful buns each and every time.
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?
Did you cover it with a towel so that it rested in it’s own steam?
You need to finish the warm buns with butter straight out of the oven and then cover it with a clean cloth so that it steams. Neglecting either step will prevent the soft exterior.
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?
Which is why measurements should be given in grams. 1 packet of instant yeast weighs 7 grams or a quarter ounce which should be just fine in this recipe.
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.