Recipe Review: Oatmeal Sandwich Bread (5 stars)

On my sixth day of self-exile in my own home, and several sourdough loaves later, I wanted to try something different. My lazy self, before the world turned upside-down, would buy a loaf of Pepperidge Farm Oatmeal bread once or twice a month. Baking bread, especially sourdough, isn’t onerous (Thank you Lord for my bread machine!) but does require you set aside the time necessary to manage the process. It doesn’t require a lot of brain cycles, but in my previously ‘normal’ routine, starting bread after six o’clock at night meant being up past my bedtime before it was done and cool enough to bag. Weekends were usually spent running errands, volunteering, shopping, visiting friends and relatives or attending events. For the foreseeable future, my bread machine and I are going to be BFFs!

I have previously made a Honey Wheat Toasting Oat loaf but it’s been years since I did so. I had a tab open in my web browser to King Arthur Flour’s web site because I baked the Basic Sourdough Bread recipe twice yesterday. I did a search for oat or oatmeal and found this Oatmeal Sandwich recipe.

I made only two modifications to the recipe. I substituted 1/4 cup of Baker’s Special Dry Milk and I just realized I should have probably only done an 1/8 of a cup. Note to self for take two of this recipe. The other change I made was to take one cup of old fashioned oats and ground them in my food processor until I had oat flour. I added the other 1/2 cup of unground oats after the dough had mixed and was partially through the kneading phase of the dough cycle on my bread machine.

The loaf passed the taste test of both my husband and myself. The texture was good with butter and with jam. We did not toast it but I believe it will also make a fine toasting bread. We both agree that next time (the next iteration) I will eliminate the brown sugar and use three to four tablespoons of honey. A tip on the recipe web page says the original recipe used molasses and I have many, many jars of molasses in my pantry so take three may be all molasses or a mash up of honey and molasses.

Terry likes this better than the aforementioned Pepperidge Farm loaf I usually buy at the grocery store. So, I’ll be alternately making honey oatmeal bread with my sourdough loaves for the foreseeable future. We both give this recipe a unanimous five star rating.