The Bad With The Good

   I've been itching to make bread that incorporates fun ingredients like oats or seeds. I found a recipe for potato oatmeal bread and had to make it. It was a pretty quick recipe, in fact it could have been ready in a few hours but I like to make it fresh in the morning before work so I let it rise overnight instead of just one hour. A little extra rising never hurt anyone :) Flour, yeast, salt, dry milk, brown sugar, oats, butter and some warm water. Recipe called for 2 "mealy" potatoes. Not sure what kind those are, but I used 3 small red potatoes instead (peeled). Boil the potatoes and mash them up, add them to the mixture and knead for 5-10 minutes. Turn out on a floured surface and form a loaf. Coat a bowl with oil/butter and let the dough rest for an hour or more until doubled in size.
   Side bar: I had a lot of sourdough starter in my fridge that I've been feeding since day one of the bread project. I thought I would start making a few sourdough recipes - each recipe makes 3 loaves - and then send them home with friends and coworkers. So I took a cup of my starter and prepared one recipe of dough. Sourdough is the most fun to knead. It gets really stretchy. I oiled a glass bowl and let the sourdough rise overnight next to my potato oatmeal dough.
   This morning I woke up at 5:30 after only hitting the snooze button once. I was too excited to see what my dough had done! Much to my dismay, the sourdough had not risen and was hard as a rock. I could barely make a fingertip impression. (I probably didn't feed the starter as I should have and let it sit in the fridge for too many days at a time without any attention). It was like a dough football. Trash. The oatmeal bread, however, looked perfectly risen with air bubbles in it, nearly tripled in size. Very nice. Even if your dough is surprisingly huge after the rising process, kneading it again will always reduce the size quite a bit. I folded it a few times, just until it shrunk enough to fit in a loaf pan. I coated it with water as the recipe called for and sprinkled the oats on top. 30 minutes at 425 while I did my hair and makeup would be just enough time.

   The house filled with the aroma of bread - which it the best way to start your day in my opinion. I peeked in the oven window when the timer went off and it looked tall, golden and beautiful. I stuck a knife into the center. It seemed done to me so I pulled it out and set it on a wire rack to cool. By the time Ian and I were dressed and ready, the loaf had cooled enough to cut. Oh my word it was amazing. Slightly chewy but not undercooked. Ian was frantically looking for apple butter to slather all over his slice. We found a jar in the pantry that we "imported" from Alaska last summer. Yu-um.
   The only thing I'll do differently next time is coat the dough with egg instead of water so the oats stick better. By the time I got it out of the pan, in my carrier and to work, most of the oats had fallen off. This recipe was quick, easy and delicious. Fuss-proof other than the boiling and mashing of the potatoes. It will definately go on my "go to" list for good bread. Oatmeal bread also makes great sandwich bread.