Oatmeal-Molasses Nut Bread

(perfect for a bread nut)

Recipe by Hardly Dangerous
Ya gonna need:
1 1/3 Cups Filtered Water
¼ Cup Steel Cut Oatmeal
2 Tablespoons of Butter
3 Tablespoons Molasses
1 Package Active Dry Yeast
1 Egg
2 Teaspoons Sea Salt
¼ Cup Chopped Toasted Sunflower Seeds
¼ Cup Almond Meal
2 Tablespoons Sesame Seeds
2 ½ Cups Unbleached All Purpose Flour
Good Olive Oil


Put the water into a small pan and bring it to a boil over high heat (that way you don’t have to wait so long). Add the oatmeal and reduce the heat to medium low. It’s gonna take a while, so you might as well crack a brew. Go back and stir the oatmeal every now an then and take a sip every now an then for about 30 minutes (steel cut oatmeal takes a spell to soften up).

While this is going on, you can surf the internet…er sumthin. After the timer dings, take the oatmeal off the stove (don’t forget to turn the stove off), add the butter and molasses. When it’s got the butter melted good, dump it into your mixing bowl (I’m talking about the one on your stand mixer). This should help it cool a bit faster, cause the temperature needs to come down to about 105F before you put the yeast in. Too hot kills the yeast. When it’s cooled enough, dump the yeast in and mix it up with a whip.

Might as well crack another brew, cause you got another wait comin. Let that yeast wake up for about 10 minutes so it can bloom. After the blooming has commenced, put on the dough hook and put in the egg. Turn the mixer on slow speed, then add the sunflower seeds, almond meal and sesame seeds. Kind of slowly add in 2 cups of the flour. Let the mixer do it’s stuff. You can add flour as needed to get the mixture dry enough that it pulls away from the sides of the bowl cleanly and forms into a floppy ball, then let her go for 7 to 10 minutes. This takes the place of what a purist would call kneading. I call it waitin’, watchin’ and restin’ time. Stop the mixer and take out the dough , and slap it into a nice ball. Take out your favorite hand turned pottery bowl, yes the one your brother Bryan made, and oil the sides a bit and put the ball of dough in it. Roll the dough around a little to coat it with oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set it in a warm place, crack another brew (maybe two) we need to wait for about an hour this time. You may opt to set the timer and take a nap at this juncture (bread making don’t have to be tense, ya know).

Don’t look at it until the timer dings again. Now you’ll be all surprised and pleased when you wake up to see that it’s about twice as big as when you shut them eyes. Now comes the hard part. The recipe that inspired this recipe says to dump it out on a clean board, I say put just a dusting of flour on the board so the dough don’t want to stick quite as much. What you’re going to do now is work it into kind of a rectangle maybe about ¾ to an inch thick. Fold it into thirds and flatten it out into another rectangle about the same size as the first. Do this rectangle thing a couple more times then just squash the dough into kind of a log about as long as your baking pan. Butter the sides of the baking pan and put the log in and cover it with a kitchen towel. We’re going to need another beer about now, cuz we got another wait.

If you have timed it correctly, your favorite half hour TV show will just be starting. When that show is over, set your oven to 375F and git to waiting right away. After your second favorite half hour TV show is over, take the towel off and put your now twice as big again dough into your now well heated oven. Set your timer for about 35 minutes. When it dings this time, you’ll have a really delicious loaf of bread ready to extract from the oven. You really should put it on a rack and let it cool for a couple of hours, but I’ll understand if you just can’t wait. It might taste extra good with a nice cold beer!!

Natti says I'm obsessed ......

Maybe she's right. I baked my first ever loaf of bread a couple of weeks ago, a wild yeast whole wheat sourdough. For my first shot at bread baking, it came out pretty good. I baked three more loaves over the last couple of weeks, and none came out as good as the first. All three taste good and have that sourdough tanginess, but two of them came out flat like a focaccia. The other looked beautiful, but it was a tad under cooked and quite dense (kind of like my noggin).



So today I decided to try something that uses regular old commercial yeast. I don't have time to wait for the sourdough starter to do it's magic (or maybe I'm just impatient). I started off with a Honey-Whole Wheat loaf... A very simple recipe: 1 package of dry yeast dissolved in 1 cup of warm milk, let it bloom for about 5 to 10 minutes in the bowl of the trusty stand mixer. Add 3 cups of whole wheat flour, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 egg, a couple of tablespoons of honey and 3 tablespoons of butter. Put the dough hook on the mixer and knead for about 10 minutes on slow speed. You come out with a ball of dough that looks similar to the one below.


That little ball of dough needs to sit in a warm place in an oiled bowl covered with Saran wrap for about an hour. During that time, it will grow as the yeast does it's magic. Then I take it out of the bowl, flatten it, fold it, flatten and fold again...several times. Eventually, I roll it into a log and put it in a buttered bread pan for another hour of rising. (sorry I didn't get pics of all this) Then into a 375 F oven for 35 minutes....Out comes a perfectly lovely loaf of bread.



Next up, an Oatmeal-Molasses loaf. Dump a cup of boiling water over a half cup of old fashioned rolled oats. Add about three tablespoons of butter and a couple of tablespoons of molasses and let it sit until cooled to 105 to 115F (so it don't kill the yeast). Add one package of active dry yeast and wait about 10 minutes for it to bloom. Add 2 cups of unbleached flour and a teaspoon of salt, put on the dough hook and knead for about ten minutes on low speed. I had to add flour to get the right consistency, but I didn'y measure it. You know it's right when the dough is stiff and pulls away from the sides of the mixing bowl. Make a dough ball just as above and put in an oiled bowl covered with Saran Wrap for it's hour of rising. It should look like this after it has risen.



Now I flatten it out...



and start folding. (This is what you missed on the Honey-Wheat bread)



I flatten and fold about a half dozen times, then roll it into a log and dump it into the buttered bread pan for another hour of rising. Before rising, it looks like this.



An hour later, it looks like this.



40 minutes in the oven at 375 and it looks like this!!