Baking Oatmeal Molasses Bread

We eat an abundance of salads throughout the summer and usually grab a nice artisan bread to go along.  The first item I tried from my recently acquired cookbook, With A Measure Of Grace was this bread.  It works great with salads but also with soups, quiche, frittata- many things.  One of my absolute favorites is toasted with jam for breakfast.   Speaking of jam, making lots of it with all the great fruit in season now, more to come.

Back to the bread, the molasses taste is in the background and not at all overpowering.  I’m not a huge molasses fan so this is a good thing.  Oats give it depth without being heavy.  I substituted spelt flour as an experiment for a friend who is sensitive to wheat and it worked fine.  I also used an olive and canola oil blend instead of butter.  The original recipe called for ¾ cup rolled and ¼ cup steel-cut oats but I used all thick cut as that’s what was on hand.

This is definitely one of my favorite new and easy to make yeasted breads.  Here is their recipe with a few adaptations.  A thank you to the gals at Hell’s Backbone Grill who wrote the book.

Ingredients:

1 cup thick rolled oats

2 cups boiling water

2 tablespoons oil or butter

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons molasses

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 tablespoon dry yeast

½ cup lukewarm water

5 1/2 cups unbleached white or bread flour (or spelt)

Method:

Pour the water over the oats in a large bowl.  Let it stand for an hour.  Add the oil or melted butter, salt and molasses.

In a separate bowl, add 1 tablespoon yeast to ½ cup lukewarm water with 2 tablespoons molasses.  Stir to combine, let sit and rest 10 minutes then add the oat mixture.

Mix in the flour.  Knead for 10 minutes or so.  While kneading, if dough is sticking to your hands such that you cannot knead it, add a little more flour.  Be careful to resist the desire to keep adding flour though.  You want a tacky but not too sticky or dry dough.

Oil a bowl, put the dough in it then oil the top of dough.  Cover it up with a damp towel.  Let rise in a warm place for two hours or until double in size.

Push dough down, shape into two loaves, and place each in an oiled loaf pan.  Let rest for at least a half hour or until doubled in size.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.  Bake loaves in the hot oven for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350 and bake another 35 or so minutes.  Bread is done when you tap on the top and it sounds hollow.  It will also be nice and brown on top.

Pop them out of their pans and cool on a rack at least 10 or 15 minutes before cutting into it.