When I was a kid, my mother used to make (or at least, a few times she made) oatmeal bread. Now, I consider myself a pretty fair bread baker, but I’ve never been able to make bread I like as much as I used to like my mother’s oatmeal bread when I was a kid. Red River Cereal bread is really close, though.
Charley is making us a chowder for dinner tonight, on the condition that I bake some bread to fill out the menu. I decided to try some oatmeal bread. Here in Casco I don’t have all my recipes handy, so I just fake it when it comes to bread. It always works. The best so far was a white bread with a cup of Whole Foods cranberry trail mix thrown in. Just in case this batch is good, here’s what I did:
- 2 C water
- 1 C quick oats (generic) — boil 5 minutes
- 2 T blackstrap molasses
- 2 T granulated sugar — add to cooked oatmeal and let cool
- 1/2 C warm water
- 1 T dry yeast
- 1 t sugar — dissolve yeast and sugar in warm water
- 2 C white flour — mix with cooled oatmeal mixture
- — add the yeast mixture. Let rise while you go out to grand opening of Bridgton Hannaford’s supermarket. Hmm, won’t be able to duplicate that part of the recipe.
- — on return from shopping trip, add :
- 3 T canola oil
- 2 t salt
- 1 C more flour
- — put 1 C more flour on breadboard, knead.
- — let rise, punch down, form loaves, let rise
- — bake at 350 degrees until done
But! Don’t try this at home until you hear from me as to whether it was any good or not! I’m a little concerned about the blackstrap molasses. If it stinks, I’ll delete this post and next time try it with regular molasses instead of blackstrap + sugar.