Whole Wheat Honey Oats Bread

Shibin's office shifted about a year back. Earlier, he had to invariably walk through a supermarket twice a day. ( shortcut, instead of having to walk two more blocks and go all the way around the building). Twice a day includes one crawling and the other running - crawling to the office ( everyone crawls in the morning especially during the beginning of the week) and running out of it in the evenings (It is my belief that he ran to meet me :P).

In the process, it is hard to ignore those items that stare at you from the shelves beckoning you to pick them or those that scream out offers  or the ones that flatter you with the lighting .  So atleast once a week, he came home with a treat to my delight. I am still a kid at heart, such treats fascinate me .

Anyways with the shifting of his office to a core business area , there were no more supermarkets to pass through and there went my treats. He comes home empty handed these days!

If you are wondering why I chose to tell this story today, I will not hold you on for long. I have precisely two reasons .

First reason is that, today is Thursday and beginning of the weekend. He is going to be the first person to read my blog !! ( Shibin - this post is a shout out to you that I still love these treats :P)

The second reason is that, it is because of his treats from the supermarket that I tasted honey oats bread for the first time. And ever since then, we have been wanting to make it. We finally did and a whole wheat one too:)

There you go -

Adapted from Bakingdom

Ingredients

1. Wheat flour - 2 and 1/2 cup
2. Oats - 1 cup
3. Warm Milk - 1  cup
4. Honey - 1/2 cup
5. Egg - 1
6. Olive oil - 3 tbsp
7. Instant yeast - 2 tsp
8. Luke warm water - 1/4 cup
9. Salt - 1/4 tsp

Method

• Break open the egg and whisk it well.
• To this, add olive oil, milk and honey. Stir well to combine.  ( Keep aside 2 tbsp of honey)
• Mix together the flour, yeast, oats and salt. ( Keep aside 2 tbsp of oats)
• Add this in batches to the wet ingredients until well combined.
• Either using a dough hook or hands bring together the dough. If it is too sticky, add 1 tbsp of flour at a time and knead for 5 minutes.
• Let the dough rest in an oiled and well covered bowl for 2 hours.
• Knead again, dust the work surface with a little flour while doing this in order to prevent this from sticking.
• Shape it up into a rectangle, roll it over and place in a loaf pan ( 9 inch). Cover and allow it to raise again for an hour.
• Meanwhile, preheat the oven at 180 degree centigrade. Keep a pan filled with water at the bottom rack for steaming.
• Once the dough has doubled, brush the top with honey and sprinkle oats.
• Bake at 180 degree centigrade for 50 minutes to an hour.
• Remove and transfer to a cooling rack.
• Slice and serve with butter or an extra dose of honey.