Amish Oatmeal Bread

I'm on a crazy quest to make a really really good home made multi grain bread. This is once recipe I've tried and liked a lot. It's pretty straight forward and is a crowd pleaser. I got this recipe from another blogger - Bethany. Here is a link to her blog: http://lollipoponabudget.blogspot.com/. She is an uber bargain hunter - she's even figured out how much each item costs her! Amazing!

Amish Oatmeal Bread
1 pkg or 2-1/4 tsp yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1 cup old fashioned oats
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 T. salt
2 T. Butter
2 cups boiling water
5-6 cups AP flour


Dissolve yeast in warm water. In a large bowl combine oats, whole wheat flour, brown sugar, salt, and margarine. Pour boiling water over it and allow it to sit until it is lukewarm. Stir in 1 cup of flour and the yeast. Stir in the remaining flour enough to make a soft dough. Knead until smooth and elastic. Cover and let rise until double. Punch down and split into two loaves. Put in greased bread pans and let rise until double again. Bake at 350* for 30-40 minutes.

Harvesting Wild Yeast

I'm either really bored or really inspired..take your pick! But, I've got a copy of this book called The Bread Bakers Apprentice by Peter Reinhart and have become inspired to try and make artisianal breads at home. Ah, nice to have bread without HFCS!

I've succesfully made several things out of the book, like the focaccia (recipe to be posted soon) and have decided to take the leap and harvest wild yeast so that I can make even better bread - like homemade sour dough or homemade panatone.

Here's how you do it:

Day 1: 1c dary rye flour (I didn't have am using whole wheat) mixed with 3/4 cup of water, room temperature. Mix it together and put it in a 4-cup glass measuring cup, cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 24 hours.

Day 2: It hasn't risen much, but that's ok. Add in 1c of bread flour and and additonal 1/2 cup of room temp water to the day 1 mixture. Stir it up together, recover it and let it ferment for another 24 hours.

Day 3: Yowza! Mr Soup decided that this should be moved out of the kitchen and into the laundry room because it is warmer. He was right - it has doubled in size. My next move is to discard 1/2 of the starter and then add in 1c bread flour and an additonal 1/2c of water. I haven't touched it yet - but it is supposed to be stinky. Stinky is good. It needs to ferment for another 24 hours.

Day 4: Should be more than doubled in size. You are supposed to repeat what you did on day three - discard half, add in 1c flour and 1/2c water.

The final result is supposed to be soft and sponge like. THis is called a seed culture and is ready to be turned into a mother starter or barm.

Will report back when we're ready to be a barm!