Tried & True Recipe: Whole-Wheat Oatmeal Bread

This is an awesome recipe for hearty, flavorful, whole-wheat bread.  It's great for sandwiches and makes the best toast!  I always try to have some on hand.

Whole-Wheat Oatmeal Bread
Originally from Good to the Grain.  As seen on Seeded At The Table

1c Water

1c Milk

1T Yeast

2 1/2 c Whole-Wheat Flour

2c Bread Flour

1c Rolled Oats (a.k.a. Old-Fashioned, just not the quick cook stuff)

scant 1T Salt

1T Honey

2T Molasses

4T Unsalted Butter, melted

Warm water and milk.  Add yeast to liquid mixture and set aside to bloom.  Meanwhile, add remaining ingredients to mixer fitted with dough hook.  Add liquid/yeast mixture.  Turn mixer to medium speed and allow dough to knead ~8 minutes.  

Leave dough in bowl and set aside, in a warm spot, covered with a towel to rise until doubled (~1hr).

Shape loaf and place in a greased bread pan.  Cover and set aside, in a warm spot, to rise until doubled (~50mins-1hr, you don't want to over-rise or it will create holes in your bread)

Pre-heat oven to 400-degrees.

Bake bread for 30-40 minutes (until when tapped it sounds hollow).  Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.  Remove bread from pan promptly.

Notes:

I recommend waiting several hours/overnight to slice the whole loaf.  I also recommend storing slices in the freezer if you're not going to be using them within a day or two.  Homemade bread doesn't have preservatives like the store-bought stuff so it doesn't stay fresh for long.  You can take frozen slices and pop them right in the toaster for some great, fresh toast!

A note about the bread pan: when I first started making this recipe I was using a "regular" bread pan.  It made HUGE slices.  Not the worst problem, but we use this a lot for toast and it didn't fit so well in the toaster!  So I bought a long, skinny bread pan and it makes better size slices.  I have to cook for more like 30 mins with the oven rack lowered to the bottom third position with the long skinny pan.  And I only allow it to rise for 50 minutes before baking, otherwise it ends up rising too much, which creates holes in the loaf.


Enjoy!