Whole-Grain Maple Oat Bread

Those of you familiar with King Arthur Flour I'm sure are big fans, like I am. When I received their latest catalog in the mail a little while ago, I happily paged through it, and loved all the recipes that were included. One that I wanted to try right away was their Whole-Grain Maple-Walnut Oat Bread. I suggested it to my Bread BakeTogether (or BBT) buddy, Janis, and she was interested in making it as well. Yay! :o)

Whole-Grain Maple Oat Bread

Who says healthy has to taste yucky? :o)


All ingredients in this bread are pantry staples which was another motivator to make this bread: whole wheat flour, white flour, old-fashioned oats (ground to flour in the food processor), water, maple syrup, yeast, etc. I only left out the walnuts (due to allergies), subbed maple sugar with agave nectar, also subbed oil for butter, and changed the amounts for some of the ingredients (see bottom of post).

Everything went into the bread machine. After 5-10 minutes of kneading in the bread machine, I stopped the machine and let the dough sit for 15-20 minutes. This resting period is called autolyse and allows the flour to absorb the liquid which aids in gluten development during kneading afterwards.

After the first rise, I rolled out the dough and shaped it into loaf. The second rise took about 45 minutes. I sprayed it with water, using a water bottle, and then baked it in a preheated 425F oven for 5 minutes for some oven spring. After that, I reduced the oven temperature to 350F and baked the bread another 30 minutes. Although the recipe says to check for an internal temperature of 190F, I find that bread can have a somewhat gummy texture at this temperature. That's why I like to bake bread to 200-205F for a better texture. This particular bread reached 208F degrees and it was perfectly moist and not underbaked and gummy.

Soft and fluffy interior. Bon appetit!

Final thoughts/tips:

• This bread was a huge hit. Moist, soft and tender, yet sturdy enough to withstand hubby spreading peanut butter on it without crumbling.
• It was great eaten fresh as well as toasted. It also freezes very well. I like to slice up the entire loaf, wrap it in plastic wrap and store it in a large ziploc bag and freeze it. Whenever you need bread, just take however many slices you want and set them on the counter to thaw out.
• The nuttiness and slight sweetness from the oats came through really well. The bread had a nice sweetness to it. But to be honest, I couldn't taste the maple flavor much even though I used a little bit more maple syrup. I'm thinking it's because I omitted the maple flavoring.
• I'm submitting this post to Susan's weekly round-up of yeast recipes at YeastSpotting. 

Whole-Grain Maple Oat Bread
(adapted from King Arthur Flour)

Ingredients:

• 9 oz (lukewarm) water + a little extra water to obtain a soft and somewhat sticky dough
• 2 oz maple syrup
• 3/8 oz agave nectar
• 1 oz vegetable oil
• 5-1/4 oz old-fashioned rolled oats, ground in food processor for 30 seconds
• 3 oz King Arthur White Whole Wheat flour
• 8-1/2 oz Gold Medal unbleached bread flour
• 10 gr vital wheat gluten
• 3/4 oz non-fat dry milk powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp (8 gr) yeast

Combine all ingredients in the bread machine and run the Dough cycle. Continue by following the instructions in the original recipe.