Honey Oat Sourdough
In many bakeries fresh bread is being taken out of the oven as the sun rises. I have yet to bake bread through the night but making bread is one of the few things that can get me up early on a weekend. The other, I have concluded, is sunrises.
I have three distinct memories of seeing the sun rise, all of which have required getting up around 4 AM. I have seen incredible sunrises from the tree tops of the Amazonian jungle, the base of Ayers Rock in Australia, and (as of last Sunday) Niagra Falls.
I think I would be ok with getting up that early every day if you promised me this…
or this…
I was at Niagra Falls as part of a road trip with friends that took us from Detroit to Toronto to Cooperstown to Philadelphia. I feel like we crammed a week’s worth of activities (2 baseball games, baseball hall of fame, bluegrass concert, camping, NCAA lacrosse championship, and general sightseeing) into 3.5 days. Aside from being completely exhausted for days when I came home, I missed a weekend of bread making.
, I went into bread baking overdrive this weekend to make up for it. I made two loaves of Tartine basic country bread and tried out a new recipe for honey oat sourdough.
I found this recipe on the bread subreddit of Reddit (r/breadit) and it piqued my interest for a variety of reasons. It has a proofing technique similar to Tartine but has a fair amount of sugar (honey) and fat (olive oil) added. I anticipated (and rightly so) that I would get the satisfying sourdough taste while having the soft crust of a sandwich bread.
I’m really pleased with how this turned out and will definitely be making it again in the future.
- 300 g bread flour
- 160 g whole wheat flour
- 10 g salt
- 315 g water
- 35 g honey
- 20 g olive oil
- 70 g oats
- 100 g fed sourdough starter
- In a large bowl mix together all flour, water, and starter. Cover and let rest for 30 minutes.
- Add honey, oil, salt, and oats and knead in the bowl for 3-4 minutes. Cover the bowl and let the bread proof for 3 hours, doing a series of 'stretch and folds' every 30 minutes.
- After the bulk rise shape the dough into a ball and rest for 30 minutes. Following the rest shape the dough into a batard. Spray the top of the dough with water and roll it in oats to coat.
- Let the dough rise on a heavily floured towel or couche for 90 minutes. Bake in a preheated 500 degree oven for 15-18 minutes, rotating halfway through. Create steam in the oven by spraying the oven walls with water or dumping boiling water into a preheated pan (cast iron works best).
- The bread should cool for about 2 hours before slicing.
