Oatmeal Bread

Bread day again!

Tassajara Bread Technique:

Mix the activated yeast (water, yeast, honey, water) with 4 cups of flour. Cover and let rise for 1 hour.

Add oil and salt, fold in. At this stage, add your extra ingredient, if any (oats). Fold in.

Add 3-4 cups of flour until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. 

Turn onto a floured board and knead for 8-10 minutes, until smooth, adding flour as necessary.

Shape into a ball and place in an oiled bowl. Cover and let rise for 50 minutes.

Punch down. Cover and let rise for 40 minutes.

Cut in half, knead each half for 3-5 minutes and then shape into loaves. Place in oiled loaf pans, flatten with your fingers, and then cover and let rise for 20-25 minutes while the oven is preheating (350). 

Bake for 50-60 minutes, remove from pans and cool on a wire rack.

I'm a huge fan of beautiful, big, fluffy bread, but as I'm getting more comfortable with the techniques in the Tassajara Bread Book, I'm starting to branch out more.

This time round I tried an oatmeal bread, because I wanted something a bit more hearty and nutritious.

As usual, with this book, it turned out really well! It's very different from the other ones I've tried though! For starters, it didn't rise as much, at any of the stages. For instance, when they were shaped into loaves, I usually only let them rise for 20 minutes while the oven is preheating, but this time, I let them rise for 40 minutes and they only rose as much as the other recipes do in half the time! Another big difference was the texture and weight of it while kneading. It was a lot harder to knead, stiffer, denser.

After rising for 40 minutes, this is all they rose!

It tastes amazing though! Sweet and chewy and moist. Heavy, so you don't need as much in one sitting (whereas with the white egg bread, I could have eaten half a loaf for one meal!). In my opinion, it's a perfect, filling bread for toast in the morning. It would taste amazing with butter and honey.

The recipe suggests using molasses instead of honey, but I only had blackstrap and that's way too strong. However, I'm going to get some fancy molasses and try this bread again using that and see what the difference is!

Baked at 350 for 50 minutes