28 June 2006

Recipe: Favorite bread, soaked

The other day, Annalivia and I accompanied Dennis to the Quad Cities and while he was in class, we went to a hoighty-toighty grocery store in Iowa. I was so excited to see that this grocery store had a wheat mill to grind one's own flour! (The extra dollar tacked onto the price of everything in the store must cover the cost of the mill).
Anyway, I ground my own hard white winter wheat and came home to try it in bread. It's amazing how different fresh flour smells! That in and of itself should tell me something.
The end product of this recipe experiment, aided by the info Dawn posted about soaking bread on her site, prompted me to go get more fresh-ground flour yesterday. So, this recipe, which I used to make only at the holidays, has now had two trials in its soaked form and is wonderful, and has thus become everyday bread for us.

Honey Oatmeal Bread
2 cups buttermilk or yogurt
6 1/2 cups whole grain flour (I use 5 cups whole wheat and 1 1/2 spelt)
1 c. oats
Combine and allow to sit overnight.

The next day combine:
1/4 c water
1/4 c honey
1 T yeast
Allow to bubble

Mix in separate dish:
1/3 c melted butter
1/4 c honey
2 t salt

Add the yeast mix and the butter to the flour mix
Add:
2 eggs, slightly beaten

Mix it all up. Knead in another cup of flour (again, I use spelt) if necessary.
Allow to rise til double, then punch down and form into two loaves (if using loaf pans, grease/ butter well). Gently slash the tops and allow to rise til double again.
Combine 1 T water and egg white before baking and brush tops. Then sprinkle with oats. Or you can use butter and sprinkle with oats. Or leave it unsprinkled.
Bake at 375 for about 35 minutes. Remove from pans to cool. You can brush with oil again, if you like a softer crust.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oooh, I could KISS you, if that wouldn't leave you in pain.... This was my next project - tackling my oatmeal honey bread!! Our recipes are amazingly similar (as in, did you get yours from "More with Less", too?) so I thank you, thank you, thank you!
Dawn :@

Anonymous said...

Mmmmmm! This looks wonderful! I make my own bread too - grind the wheat and all. I shall have to try this.

I also stopped by to make sure you visited my blog to check on your poem! :) After you have done so, be sure to e-mail me, ok?!?!?!

April said...

Oh, Loni, thank you! Wow! What an honor. Geesh.
Dawn, I think I got this recipe from the web -- the wonders of the internet -- plagiarism galore!