Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Honey Oat Wheat Bread - OH SO YUMMY!

Have I ever told you how much I love bread? Oh my, it's my weakness. Especially when it comes out of the oven all fresh and delicious smelling and IRRESISTIBLE! I've made homemade bread just about every week (or more) for several years now. My tried and true whole-wheat bread recipe is here and I mostly make this one because it's fast, dependable, healthy and very tasty. Well, I've been branching out a little bit trying to get some variety to our diet. Here's a variation on my tried and true recipe that I made today - the thing I loved about it most was how easy it was - as easy as putting in one more ingredient in it and how yummy it turned out. Just a slightly lighter taste than my every-day bread recipe. So good....in fact, it has all the necessary qualities to become another tried and true bread recipe. Enjoy!!

Honey Oat Wheat Bread
Printable Recipe

*Makes 3 loaves of bread

*Helpful Hint: If you put the oil in the 1/3 cup measuring cup first and then reuse it to measure the honey, the honey won’t stick.

INGREDIENTS:
3 Cups hot water, microwave on high 2-3 min or until quite warm ( >110° F)
1/3 Cup oil
1/3 Cup honey
1 Tbsp. salt (put in first before adding yeast)
½ Cup quick or old-fashioned oats
3+ Cups freshly ground whole wheat flour (ground from hard white wheat)
½ Cup gluten flour*
2 Tbsp. yeast on top of flour

DIRECTIONS:
Combine above ingredients in order in a Bosch mixer with dough hook and mix. Add more whole wheat flour until the dough pulls away from the side. Then mix for an additional six minutes. Divide dough into 3 loaves (the dough will still be VERY sticky - so sticky that you won't be able to form your loaves without putting oil on your hands). Put dough in oiled pans. Turn the bread over in the oil and top with a light sprinkling of oats. Let rise until double or until the bread fills the pans. While bread is rising, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. When the bread has risen, bake it at 400 deg. for 5 minutes. Then turn down the heat to 350 degrees and continue baking for 25 min or until done.

*NOTE on the Gluten flour: I use Bob's Red Mill Vital Wheat Gluten Flour that I buy at WinCo foods in their bulk bins - or you can get a 25 lb. bag of it there if you order it. I think you can also get it at Walmart in smaller quantities - like 22 oz. pkgs. You only use 1/2 cup for 3 loaves so it lasts a long time. It allows you to make the bread with whole-grain flour and still have it light and fluffy and stick together. This really is not an optional ingredient - you can try to leave it out, but you will end up with denser bread, that is crumbly, doesn't have as long of a shelf life and really is not as enjoyable to eat. Another option (if you're looking for one) is to use a good quality, high gluten white flour instead of some of the whole-wheat flour (experiment with how much - maybe 2 cups or more to get it to a good stick-together consistency). I'd rather spend a little more for the gluten flour because you can use less of it (which means more whole-grain flour which is better for you) and still have a great textured, tasty bread.

Recipe Source: healthyfamilycookin.blogspot.com

5 comments:

LeMira said...

This looks yummy! I will have to try this recipe.

Anonymous said...

This is a great recipe. Followed directions and ingredients exactly and the loaves came out perfect. Really good taste and texture. It's also very easy. So wonderful that it's whole grain. A real keeper! Thanks. Norma

Unknown said...

It sounds good. About how long did you need to wait for it to rise?

Heather {Healthy Family Cookin} said...

About 20-30 minutes of rising time

Unknown said...

Thanks for the quick response! This looks great. I'll try it!

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