Steel Cut Oatmeal Bread

My book club is meeting at my house on Tuesday. We read Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Stout. I really liked the book, but the woman it was about is a sort of tall, raw-boned woman and when she serves food, it's pretty simple - applesauce, baked beans.

We usually try to have food that fits the book. I have baked beans in the oven now. I also thought I'd serve pimento cheese sandwiches. Oatmeal bread is great for pimento cheese. I have a loaf from yesterday, but that isn't enough for the book club, so I made a different oatmeal bread today.

Today I made the oatmeal bread from King Arthur Flour's 200th Anniversary Cookbook. The recipe called for either steel cut oats or oatmeal and since I used oatmeal yesterday, I used steel cut oats today.

Here are the ingredients:

1 1/2 cups boiling water
1 cup rolled or steel-cut oats
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup butter (4 T)
1 T salt

1 T active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1 tsp honey
2 cups WW flour
3 1/2 - 4 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour.

First you mix the oatmeal mix (the first five ingredients) and let them cool to room temperature.

Then you soften the yeast in the warm water with the teaspoon of honey. When it is bubbling, you add all the rest of the ingredients. I didn't have any whole wheat flour so I used all unbleached flour. Of course, you add the flour gradually and end up kneading the mix with the dough hook.

Here are the steel cut oats, the butter and the salt, waiting for the honey and the boiling water!



After the first rise, you shape the dough into two loaves (8 1/2" X 4 1/2 " pan) and let the loaves rise about 45 minutes. Then you put the loaves into a cold oven and turn the oven on to 400 degrees for 15 minutes. By the end of the 15 minutes, my oven read 375 and wasn't up to 400, but you are then supposed to turn the oven down to 350 for 25 more minutes. So I did.



Here are the two beautiful loaves - and I wish you could smell them - they smell like the honey from my beehives. The little knobby steel cut oats add a nice texture to this bread. Can't wait for the pimento cheese sandwiches!



I LOVE this bread. The slices feel substantial - good for sandwich making - and the crunch of the steel cut oats is such an interesting addition.

Note: This bread makes good toast, but gets a little gummy when used for sandwiches. I used it for pimento cheese for my book club and it absorbed the pimento cheese in such a way that I found it unappealing.