My Favorite Loaf of Bread

My passion is baking. I especially love baking bread. There's something so magical about putting a few simple ingredients together and ending up with a wonderful loaf of bread. The aroma of bread baking in my house makes me happy. This is my all-time favorite bread recipe. It's adapted from a recipe I found in the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking Book (one of my favorite cookbooks). I make this bread often, and it always disappears in no time. I've resorted to making 3 loaves at a time. We eat one loaf within a few hours of it coming out of the oven. One loaf is used in the next day or so, and one loaf ends up in the freezer. I hope you try it and let me know how you like it!

Honey Oatmeal Sandwich Bread

1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) boiling water
1 cup (3 1/2 ounces) old fashioned rolled oats
2 tablespoons (1 ounce) unsalted butter, cut into 3 pieces
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup (3 ounces) honey
1 cup (4 ounces) unbleached all purpose flour
1 2/3 cups (7 ounces) traditional whole wheat flour
1/4 cup (1 ounce) nonfat dry milk
2 teaspoons instant yeast

Place the boiling water, oats, butter, salt, and honey into a medium bowl, stir, and let the mixture cool to lukewarm. (I usually do this step and then jump into the shower or take the kids to school so that the mixture has time to cool. If you add the yeast when the mixture is too hot, the bread won't rise!) Mix the remaining dough ingredients with the oat mixture and knead (by hand, machine, or bread maker) until you've made a soft smooth dough. Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl, cover, and let rise for 1 hour. The dough should be doubled in bulk. (This dough will be stickier than most bread doughs. This is OK because whole wheat flour takes a while to absorb the moisture. If you add more flour so that the bread dough feels like a white dough recipe, your bread will end up dry.)

Lightly grease a 8x4" loaf pan. Gently deflate the dough and shape it into a loaf. Place it in the prepared pan. Gently cover it with lightly greased plastic wrap and let it rise until it has crowned 1 1/2 inches over the rim of the pan, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Preheat oven to 350 degrees when your loaves are almost ready to bake.

Uncover and bake the bread for about 35-45 minutes, tenting the loaves with foil after 20 minutes to prevent over browning. The bread is done when it is golden brown and an instant read thermometer inserted in the center registers 190 degrees. Remove it from the oven, and after about a minute turn it onto a rack. Cool the bread completely before cutting it.

Michelle's notes: I like to braid this loaf...I just think it looks cool that way. You can shape it however you want. I once made this dough and shaped them into little bunnies for Easter. It's a really easy dough to work with, be creative! Oh, and just in case you were wondering, we never wait until the loaf is cool to cut into it around here. We jump in as soon as it comes out of the pan!

I changed the original recipe to use more whole wheat flour and less all purpose flour. I'd recommend freshly ground wheat flour (I like hard red winter wheat). It's a great way to rotate your food storage. If you use wheat flour from the store, make sure you store it in your fridge or freezer so that it doesn't go rancid. I think a lot of times people say they don't like wheat bread because the flour that was used wasn't fresh. Rancid wheat flour adds the bitter taste that some people associate with wheat breads.

I use a baker's scale to measure my ingredients, it's really easy and in baking it helps make sure things turn out the way the author intended. Don't worry though...if you don't have a scale measuring out the ingredients should work just fine.