Honey oat bread fresh from the oven.
This new year is shaping up to be the year of bread. Homemade, that is. For the past few months I have been experimenting with baking fresh bread. It is really hard to find a decent loaf at the grocery store that has some whole grains but is also actually edible, not dried out, or mouldy in 4 days.
So I’ve been trying out loaves of whole wheat, also made some baguettes and then landed on this honey oat bread recipe. As a home baker, I have been finding 100% whole wheat recipes hard to produce (and hard on my KitchenAid mixer- had a little incident with some smoke one day!), so I’ve been trying out recipes that mix some whole grains with white flour to keep from being too dense and hard to knead.
This Rustic Honey Oatmeal Bread recipe from Robin Hood flour fit the bill. I really like the taste of honey in bread, and this one also had a decent amount of oats (2 cups oats to 4 cups flour). I modified the recipe to only use honey as the sweetener and just used 4 cups flour as my dough came together at that amount. You end up with 2 decent sized round loaves, which are better for toast than sandwiches. It could probably be baked in small bread pans if you want it sandwich sized. Nice crust, dense interior- not a lofty loaf but a nice crunchy piece of toast.
I have some new bread pans on order as well as a baguette pan, so will report back on further bread baking adventures.
La Gourmandesse 