Mom's Oatmeal Bread

Mom's Oatmeal Bread
(the recipe she tried as a new bride that gave her the confidence to bake bread)

1 cup oatmeal

2 cups boiling water
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
1/2 cup honey
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 package dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
6 cups flour (can use 1/2 wheat)

Pour boiling water over oatmeal in a large bowl. Stir in butter, honey and salt. Allow to cool. Dissolve yeast and sugar in 1/2 cup warm water and add to the oatmeal mixture. Add flour. Knead for 10 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap and let raise until double in volume. Punch down, and form into two mounds. Place into two greased 9x5" bread pans. Let rise until double. Bake at 375° for 30-35 minutes.

Okay, that's mom's recipe. Over the years I've changed it a touch. First of all, 9x5" loaves don't fit nicely into a bag for freezing, so I use 8x4" pans. And I increase the recipe so I make 4 loaves at a time. I've learned that adding gluten makes wheat bread lighter and I like the texture that results when adding an egg or two. Here's the recipe that I used today:

Oatmeal Bread

1 1/2 cups oatmeal
3 cups boiling water
3 tablespoons butter or margarine
3/4 cup honey
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 tablespoons gluten
1 egg
1 teaspoon sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons dry yeast
3/4 cup warm water
5 cups wheat flour
5 cups white flour

The procedure was the same. I left it rising while I ran errands for a couple of hours. It then rose in the pans for 40 minutes. And I baked it for just under 30 minutes. Yummy!!!

Note that if you want to make a multi-grain version of this bread, instead of the oats, combine 1 1/4 cups 7 grain cereal with 2 1/2 cups boiling water and let it sit for an hour. Then proceed as the recipe suggests.

Super, Duper Oatmeal Bread - We have some food storage oats that are old enough to be tasting bitter and we're trying to find ways to use them faster. (We don't believe in just throwing things out!) So, I tried increasing the ratio of oats (I ground them with the food processor into a coarse flour) to wheat flour in this recipe, to half and half. That made a pretty dense bread, so next time maybe I'll try a 3 or 4 to 1 ratio.

I also had the thought to mix old oats with new oats, and that turned out to be a brilliant idea, particularly for our morning breakfast cereal!

Today I wanted to make a potato-oat combination. I thought about just adding some mashed potatoes to one of the above versions, but figured for the first time, I ought to follow a real recipe. Here's the one I found. While I used the correct ratio of ingredients, I changed the process a bit, so here's the recipe:

Potato Oat Bread

2 cups warm water

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon yeast

1 1/2 cups old-fashioned oats

1 cup mashed potatoes (I used instant, mixing 2/3 cup instant flakes with 2/3 cup boiling water)

5 cups flour

2 teaspoons salt

1/3 cup dry milk powder (double if using instant)

Pour water into the mixer, then sprinkle sugar and yeast on top. Let set for a few minutes, until bubbly. Add the oats and mashed potatoes and give it a stir. Add 3 cups of flour, the salt and milk powder and knead for a few minutes. Gradually add the remaining flour and knead until smooth. Let rise for 1-2 hours, then form into 2 9x5" loaves and let rise again for 45 minutes or so. Bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes, then lower heat to 350 and bake an additional 30-40 minutes. Let cool before slicing.