This bread is dedicated to my wife because I created the recipe with most of the ingredients in her favorite breakfasts! It has a wheaty, grainy taste with a surprisingly light crumb and a faintly sweet flavor, and is very easy to make, though slightly time-intensive!
As I’ve been doing lately, this bread started with a pre-ferment which ripened overnight and then I made the bread in the morning. I actually used my sourdough starter, but I’ll give the measurements without. Since there’s so much flavor going on in this bread, you could skip the pre-ferment, though you would miss out on its other benefits (like increased acidity which leads to bread that keeps longer; also the doughs made with pre-ferments come together easier with greater strength due to part of the water being absorbed by the flour). If you skip it, make sure you still add the pre-ferment ingredients to the final dough.
Pre-ferment
- 125g bread flour (1 C)
- 125g water (.5C)
- 1g instant yeast (.25t)
Mix all ingredients together, loosely cover, and place in a 70* area to ripen for 12-16 hours.
Final Dough
- 251g pre-ferment (all of it)
- 200g whole wheat flour (1.5C)
- 175g bread flour (1.25C)
- 100g rolled oats (1C)
- 50g ground flaxseeds (3T)
- 50g honey (2.5T)
- 330g water (1.5C)
- 2g instant yeast (.5t)
- 13g kosher salt (1T)
- 50g walnut pieces (.3C)
Warm water to body temperature. Pour in oats and flax and let soak for 5-10 minutes. Then mix all ingredients EXCEPT walnuts until mixture comes together. Mix on first speed for 3 minutes. Mix on second speed for 4 minutes, adding walnuts. If dough creeps up hook, push down with a spatula. I ended up having to take it out and finish kneading by hand because towards the end it just grabbed onto the dough hook and spun around. It should be fairly sticky but not runny, and have good strength when tugged.
Let dough ferment for 2 hours, folding after the first hour. After the second hour, shape into a compact ball and allow to rest for 10-20 minutes.
Shape dough ball into a oval loaf and place in a 9×5 loaf pan. I still haven’t decided if you need to spray some cooking spray on the loaf pan, or lightly dust with flour, but I went with the flour this time and it worked well.
Allow to rise for 1.5 hours. After 1 hour preheat oven to 400*. Slash loaf. Right before loading oven, splash 1 oz water in the oven for steam, then bake for 30-35 mins until very dark in color and interior hits 190*
Cool and serve! I think it will make excellent french toast! (70 cals/oz, 1.5g fiber/oz)
