Oatmeal Bread

You gotta love arbitrary food holidays: today’s is World Nutella Day. Not that I need an excuse to ingest that deliciously creamy combination of cocoa and hazelnuts–or anything more than a spoon to enjoy it.

Though a slightly more traditional taste-delivery system can make you feel more legit… and slightly less like a hobo.

Then again, how many hobos have you seen noshing on Nutella anyway?

In any case, I mated my Nutella with Fluff and Skippy Natural Super Chunk peanut butter on this yummy Oatmeal Bread that I made the other day when I felt like death barely warmed over. I could barely get myself out of bed but hey, I was baking. Yay, me! The miracle of modern kitchenry delivers, once again.

If you don’t have a bread machine, you can make this the old fashioned way with either the dough hook on your mixer or hand-kneading. After the kneading, give the dough time to rise (covered with a damp towel) til it’s about double in size, punch down, put it in your loaf pan, and cover and let it rise again for 30 minutes or so in a draft-free, somewhat warm section of your house before baking in a preheated 350 degree oven and you’ll get the same results–with a better looking loaf, actually. The price we pay for convenience. Ah…

Oatmeal Bread
adapted from Biggest Book of Bread Machine Recipes (Better Homes and Gardens Cooking)
makes one 1.5-lb loaf

• 1 cup + 2 Tbsp buttermilk, slightly warmed in the microwave
• 1 Tbsp coconut oil (you can also use butter), softened
• 3 Tbsp local honey
• 1 cup old fashioned rolled oats
• 2 1/2 cups bread flour (you can use all-purpose)
• 3/4 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp active dry yeast or bread machine yeast

Put all the ingredients into the bread machine pan as directed by the manufacturer of your bread machine: in my case, that means dumping all the wet ingredients in first, then dry, with yeast on the top as the last thing added. Put the pan in the machine and select the appropriate loaf size (1.5 lbs) and the whole grain cycle. In the first 5 minutes that the machine is working, check periodically that the dough ball is sticky enough that it’s staying together as a ball: if it’s dry and crumbly, add more milk, 1 Tbsp at a time; if it’s so sticky that the machine can’t knead it, add more flour, 1 Tbsp at a time. Be careful not to add too much extra as this can throw off the ratios and ruin the bread. Then sit back and wait for the machine to work its magic. Once done, cool completely on a wire rack before slicing and enjoying.

Fresh bread is best enjoyed the day its baked but it can be kept for a few days on the counter. I highly recommend a bread keeper like the Progressive International Adjustable Bread Keeper if you’re going to make bread often.