50% oat loaf
This is a follow-up to Precaud's interesting post on enhancing oatiness. And my, what a journey. I love my oats, and have lots of experience making them for granola, incorporating a portion into my bread and so forth, but at a high percentage, oats do very funny things.
So I made three oat breads this weekend, all with the same ratios of 5:4:1 for oat: white bread flour: red whole wheat. Apart from the first bread being made with SD and the other two made with IDY, the most significant change was the hydration.
The idea was to do what I have always done for my granola, albeit at a higher hydration. I found that soaking the oats for a couple of hours before baking them really brought out their oatiness (aside: I started doing it to make them more digestible for family members, but in the meantime found out that this was a great method to also make granola clusters!!!)
For this bread, the method is as follows: The night before baking, I soak the oats in milk, some lemon juice and a sprinkle of rye flour, and leave overnight in the fridge. The next day, I mix the soaked oats with the white and wholegrain flours, water and yeast. Note: I use normal cooking oats, not quick-cooking or steel-cut.
First loaf
For the first loaf I decided to apportion some of the bread flour and all the whole wheat flour to a levain. I went with a conservative 100% hydration of the oats (so equal weight oats and milk). The next day, all the oats had soaked up the milk and were not mushy at all. I mixed up the dough, levain and added enough water to make a dough that felt like 80% hydration. BF and final proof took 8 hours.
Results: Very tasty, but sourness overpowers oatiness. Dough got drier and drier during BF, which told me that the oats could have soaked up more water overnight. Pleasant loaf, but could definitely be more moist.
Second loaf
Decided to increase hydration of soaked oats to 130%. Mixed in instant dry yeast to dough the next day. Added water to go beyond what I'm comfortable dealing with in a loaf, anticipating dough becoming drier like previous attempt. I was not comfortable, indeed. But dough ended up being where I wanted it to be, and bread turned out extremely well. Oatiness comes through much better now. But I wondered if the rise would be even better with increased hydration?
Third loaf
Encouraged, I decided to increased the hydration of the soaked oats to 150%. I think this version is the one I'm most happy about (the picture right at the top of the post). Here are the figures to make a 600g loaf :
Oak soaker: 150g normal cooking oats, 225g room temp or cold milk, squeeze of lemon juice, 1 tsp of rye flour
If possible, leave this at about 22-25 degrees for 3 hours before refrigerating it overnight. If not, just dump it into the fridge. The next day, all the oats would have soaked up the milk - there should be no milk left in the container. Add to the oats: 120g bread flour, 30g wholewheat flour, 1g instant dry yeast, 4g salt, 10ml agave syrup (optional), about 65g water.
Note: We do end up with the ratio of dry:wet ingredients being 1:1. (I'm cautious about calling this 100% hydration because most of the liquid was used as a soaker.)
When first mixed, the dough is unruly and hopeless.
But after 3 hours, it gets better.
BF took 8 hours and final proof took 2 hours. I baked it for 25 mins at 220C and 15 mins at 205C.
Too late here now to take a crumb shot, but essentially the same as the second loaf - moist, not crumbly at all, good bite with oats texture.
The real winner of this loaf is the crust - it is insanely delicious, like eating a granola crumb. I really have never achieved anything like this before. I will certainly be baking more of this bread in future.
Some notes:
1. It's a horribly wet dough to be confronted with. I simply used a spatula to fold the batter-dough upon itself, a couple of times over the first 4 hours of BF. Obviously there's no kneading whatsoever. I suppose it could work with a mixer but I don't have one.
2. I think my oats probably reach maximum hydration overnight in the fridge at about 120%, so it is possible to apportion more liquid content to be added to the final dough the next day, instead of soaking the oats in more liquid overnight. I do this simply to break down the oats a little more, and to be hyper sure that the oats have soaked up enough such that they don't start drying out my dough. If you prefer your oats to have a firm bite, I advise sticking with an overnight hydration of not more than 120%, then adding more water to the final dough.
3. I think the wholewheat does contribute a distinct flavour and bite to the loaf. I like it, but if you want even more oatiness, that would be something to completely omit. I would incorporate spelt, emmer or einkorn instead. In fact I will try that soon.
4. There is barely any rise during BF. I shaped it when it started smelling really good and yeasty, and the surface of the dough had some tension. Again, no real idea when to bake it. The bread looks and tastes good, so the timings kind of worked. Don't know what would have happened if I waited longer, but I was hungry!!!
5. I think replacing the agave syrup with oat malt, and further coating the bread with oats will bring the oatiness to the next level.
And finally, a shot of my granola to bring an end to this oaty post:
Comments
I'm going to have to try that. I love oats!
I'd like to see your granola recipe also.
Thanks for posting
Gary
Please let me know how it turns out for you!
As for the granola - be careful they are very addictive:
Ingredients:
500g normal cooking oats (not steel-cut and not fast-cooking)
250g agave syrup
330ml milk
⅔ cup + 1 tablespoon of sunflower (or any neutral tasting) oil
150g flaked almonds
150g pecan
150g pistachio
50g desiccated coconut
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 175C.
2. Mix the milk with ⅔ cup of oil and pour over all the oats in a dish, gently stirring. Leave this to stand for 20 mins. (Proceed with step 3 in the meantime, but put your timer on). After the 20 mins, mix in 220g of agave syrup and let it stand for at least 15 mins, longer is OK.
3. Cut all your nuts coarsely and lay them out in a single layer on a parchment-lined baking tray.
4. In a small bowl, mix 1 tablespoon of oil with 30g of agave syrup. Drizzle this mixture over the nuts in the tray. Once the oven is warm enough, put the tray of drizzled nuts into the oven. After 7 mins, briefly mix. Add in desiccated coconut and continue baking for another 8 mins till very slightly golden brown. Remove from the oven and turn down the oven heat to 150 degrees.
5. At this point, your oats mixture from step 1 is probably done with oilmilk-soaking and sugar-soaking. Spread this mixture out in clumps and clusters on a parchment-lined baking tray (two trays is better, but one is sufficient). I sometimes use my hands if the mixture is very sticky.
6. Bake the oats for about 110 mins (if using one tray) and about 90 mins (if using two trays), making sure to toss, redistribute and break up very big chunks every 30 mins or so; also move the browner bits at the edge into the middle and vice versa. By the end, your granola should look golden brown, and is dry to touch. Add the nuts + coconut from step 4 to the tray, toss, and bake for another 10 mins. Then remove from the oven, and leave to cool for at least 40 mins before storing.
Some notes:
1. Feel free to make your own nut combinations as desired. For me the pistachios are non-negotiable!
2. I find that the 20+20 mins of soaking is sufficient to make clusters and give the oats a good texture (i.e. they steam a little in the oven, get cooked, and crisp up without drying out excessively). I have family members who suffer from digestive issues consuming store-bought granola and I follow a different procedure for them. I generally soak the oats in the milk with lemon juice and a bit of rye flour for 3 hours at room temperature and up to overnight (in the fridge), before adding in the oil and the syrup. If soaking for 3 hours, it is possible to increase the milk hydration of oats from 66% to 70%; if overnight, to 75%.
3. Agave syrup can be substituted with honey or maple syrup but those brown a little faster so keep an eye on them in the oven.
4. It's not always easy to ascertain if the granola is completely cooked, especially if you have big clusters. They only dry completely after 30 mins from the oven and will crisp up (think cookies: if they emerge crisp from the oven they will probably be a little on the tough side when they cool). Trial and error? Friends who have tried this recipe have had to adjust cooking times based on their ovens by up to 10 mins, some adding, some subtracting.
5. To make really, really big clusters, increase the hydration of soaked oats. You will get even more slimy mess after the soaking and can shape the clusters as you desire. In my experimentation stages, I once made an extreme version and the entire tray was a granola cluster! You'll just need to extend the baking time and potentially lower the temperature a little after an hour of baking.
-Lin
An enjoyable post to read and very interesting. Well done! The results look delicious.
Cheers,
Gavin
Maybe an oats + rye bread is on the cards?
-Lin
Well done Lin, you seem to have achieved an incredibly good outcome and I enjoyed being taken along on your journey through these different breads. It looks like it has it all - interesting flavour, and a stunning crust. I'm adding it to my list of things to try!
What strikes me about your bread is how different the crumb looks to what I remembered my classical 'oat porridge' breads looked like for which I remember a lot of gumminess. Although it might be more similar than I think - do you have a better photo of the crumb from the third loaf at all? What did that bread look like on the outside, was it upright or slumpy? (Edit: d'oh its the picture at the top of your post, so not slumpy!)
Not sure if you're a fan of the oat soakers just because of the granola; and most curious to know if you've ever tried making breads with cooked oats and what your experience of that has been? Maurizio has a great write up of his oat porridge loaf that was inspired by the oat porridge bread from Tartine 3. And you seemed to have miraculously made a super hydrated bread that was a success whilst his highly hydrated attempt with cooked oats and SD was what he called abysmal ("Attempt #2 – The Hydrated Surprise" ).
Edit 2: And, I forgot, there was a community bake here of Maurizio's oat porridge bread.
-Jon
Thanks for the refs, Jon! And very kind words, as usual. I have baked with cooked oats previously, but never with the weight of the dry oats themselves more than 15-20% of the weight of the total dry ingredients (Maurizio's loaf is at 20%, I think). Because precaud was aiming to make a bread with an extremely high % of oats, I shot for 50% just to see what would happen.
Thinking backwards from there, I figured that if I wanted an adequately moist but neither gummy nor crumbly texture, it probably meant I had to hydrate the oats with room temperature liquid, rather than scald or cook it. I imagined that highly gelatinous cooked porridge would make it extremely difficult for me to incorporate the flour and that some added water, and might well be difficult to rise.
In the past, when I baked with cooked oats, I simply saw it as small added component of the main dough - and I was always quite confident that the moisture of the porridge would be equalized somewhat by the rest of the dough (it surely cannot make the dough way too slack to shape or bulk, I thought). Here, it felt to me like I needed to work the other way round with the oats being the main ingredient.
Maurizio's porridge in that attempt appears to be hyper hydrated - 250g oats and 800g water! - which is what resulted in the dough becoming very slack. I think Steve has a post about soaker hydration percents, and what appeared to be hydration neutral for his rolled oats in boiling water was 206%, and at room temperature 90%. I know that my oats definitely soak up more than 90% of cold/room temp milk by weight going by experiment one - more like 120%. If we take 120% as the hydration neutral point of my oats, then the overall hydration of my final formula would be a reasonable 80%.
Here's the crumb. The oatiness comes through even more today, was not expecting that. There is no detectable gumminess yet.
WhatsApp Image 2024-09-30 at 12.17.57.jpeg
Now I definitely need to try it out. It makes sense now that you describe it to not gelatinize the oats.
Your description reminded me of Mini Oven offering advice here to add oats into a dough as a way to recover if you'd over hydrated it by mistake.
Is your bread flour that you use a strong bread flour? Trying to decide if I need to do similar when I try out your recipe.
I used my 14g protein bread flour for this one. I figured that if I can't knead it and it has to carry all the weight of the oats it has to be heavy duty.
I think if I had to use my AP, I might resort to autolysing and decreasing the hydration - the crumb and lift will suffer a bit but it should work.
P.S. How ingenious of Mini Oven. I have never thought about that. Solves the problem while injecting flavour, nutrition and texture!
I have been following your "oatie" adventure as well. I have made my adapted version from another TFL poster, Dani's formula. I flake my oats and soak it. On this last batch I used Kernza a perennial grain and actually cooked it as it requires that in order to get it soft enough to chew. Both breads have been excellent. I am excited to try your ideas. I always fold mine in the bowl as you did when they are that wet. I am going to bake it in my well greased pullman with the lid on. I am looking forward to the incredible flavor you have achieved.
Thank you for posting such great information. c
And wow, baking with oats that you flake yourself must be incredible! Looking forward to seeing how it works out in your pullman, if you do try it out. I think the flavour comes through with the long fermentation and of course pure oatiness at such high %. I hope the crust works out well in the pullman, let me know!
-Lin
My Pullman is the large size so I may just use a regular bread pan since the Pullman takes 1300 g of dough depending on how much whole grain flour is used. Or I’ll do free form if it looks as developed as yours. Homeflaked grains do behave differently. Thanks again c
Wow, what a great achievement! I think a really good crust adds to both the flavor and the mouth feel while eating a slice, and yours fits the bill perfectly. And thanks for sharing the details of your progression through the versions. That's valuable and interesting.
TomP
Appreciate it! Certainly was a journey and it felt great reaching a version I was pleased with.
-Lin
What is this oat malt? I can find malted oat berries but not syrup.
Thanks
but not tried it. Something like this? I note that it contains both oat and barley malt. Was just ruminating over precaud's original post and alcophile's suggestion to use oat malt, so wondered if the extract might be interesting to try.