This is my favourite bread. I skipped a couple of weeks, and when I finally got back to it, I was reminded all over again how delicious this bread is. It’s soft, moist, and much more flavourful than plain white bread and has a nice chewy crust. This recipe is adapted from one found in:
Eric Kastel and Cathy Charles, Artisan Breads, At Home with the Culinary Institute of America (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010) 54–5.
Yields two large (650 g) loaves.
- Water: 142 g
- Oats, rolled: 96 g
Put the oats in a heatproof bowl and boil the water. Pour the water over the oats, cover, and let sit for at least 30 minutes.
- Oats, rolled, toasted: 107 g
Toast the oats and set aside to cool.
- Water, 80°F: 360 g
- Honey: 67 g
- Malt syrup: 4 g
Combine the water, oat soaker, honey, and malt in the mixing bowl and mix with a dough hook for 2 minutes to break down the oat soaker.
- Bread flour: 572 g
- Yeast, instant dry: 8 g
- Salt: 16 g
Combine the flour and yeast and then add to the water mixture in the bowl. Then add the salt. Mix on low speed for 4 minutes. Be sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl and even flip over the dough partway through. Increase to medium speed and mix for another 3 minutes. Now add the toasted oats and mix again for a minute or so until the oats are well distributed.
Put the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover, and let rest for an hour.
Place the dough on a lightly floured surface, divide into two equal pieces (~650 g), place them in lightly oiled loaf pans, cover and let rest for another hour.
Place in a 400°F oven for 15–20 minutes. It depends on your oven. Watch closely the first few times you make it. It takes 16–18 minutes for me.
Remove from the oven, cool, and dig in!!