oatmeal bread troubleshooting
Hi,
I have read several of of the threads on here about oatmeal bread after having trouble with 2 batches in a row. The standard bread I make for our family is a whole wheat loaf. I typically make it in batches of 8 loaves mixed and stored in a rubbermaid underbed storage bin (shallow and wide), using stretch and fold method.
First I tried substituting part cooked and cooled oatmeal for part of the ingredients in my own recipe. Even with gluten in the recipe, the dough did not want to develop, and kept breaking apart. I know textured additives can cut/break the dough, but I made successful oatmeal bread at least once like 10 years ago using cooked/cooled oats, so I know it can be done.
So I tried a recipe found on the internet that had a nice picture and great reviews, only adapting the instructions for stretch and fold method like my regular loaf. The dough behaved just like the first batch, and broke apart. In the picture below, those are 4-loaf blobs of dough.
Seeing the dough behave like this, I thought it maybe an extra stretch and fold would help, but that seemed to make the yeast quit, and the bread didn't want to rise after that. The result was moist, tasty bricks that look every bit as ugly as the dough.
After reading several of the oatmeal bread threads, and how long a kneading time oatmeal bread takes, it makes me think that oatmeal bread is NOT a good candidate for the stretch and fold method, and maybe therefore not feasible to make in large batches without some kind of stand mixer?
If I ground the oats to flour before cooking and cooling, would that help? Again, reading the threads, I don't think so.
Thanks so much for any advice you can give!
Elizabeth
post up your recipe and method.
I'm not an expert but it looks like the gluten structure has degraded which is usually overproofing.
This picture was actually taken not long after the 2nd S & F. (It looked like this during the first one too, only worse). When I do my regular bread recipe, the blobs poof up and crowd right into each other and fill in the container.
Hi Elizabeth, don't know if you have read my post where I also had some questions.Since then I had pretty good success with this bread. Yes it is a pretty fragile dough and over proves very easily. The things I learned are: to use bread flour instead of all purpose, to break up by hand the soaked rolled oats ( I use hot water and soak them over night with some of the salt). My formula is of German origin and is mixed: sour dough and instant yeast. I autolyze flour, soaker and rest of the water first, then add all the rest of the ingredients. Then I bulk ferment 75min with 2xS&F after 25 min. Final fermentation 30 min. I really like this bread. It has a great oat taste, is chewy, moist and very satisfying. Please post your formula.
Barbara
Hi Barbara,
The only post of yours I found was this one: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/27545/my-adapted-german-oat-bread
It looks delicious, like the kind my husband would eat all in one sitting. (I try to not make too many breads that are that good...) But, it looks a little different form your procedure above. Is it the same bread?
What I did was this:
8 c kefir, plus 1/2 c. lecithin granules (I use kefir as the base liquid in most breads I make. We make kefir daily here.) Needs to sit for a while while warming so the lecithin will incorporate.
2c. water
4 c oats
Cook and cool.
Add remaining liquids to oatmeal:
1 c molasses (was out of honey)
2 sticks butter
In large tub, mix dry ingredients:
1/2 c. yeast
12c. Prairie Gold
6+ c. AP
1/4 c. salt.
1 c. sucanat (didn't have enough molasses)
Add cooled oat mixture to dry ingredients, and mix (it mixed up beautifully, much easier than my normal bread). After sitting for a while, divide dough into 2 4-loaf blobs and do the S&F thing, 2 cycles. Divide dough into loaf portions and rest 15 min. Form into loaves, rise, and bake. From looking at your recipe and other oatmeal threads, maybe the dough was also too dry. The dough was tacky, and the final bread is moist, but the dough was not not too terribly wet.
I guess my regular recipe is so flexible, the procedure isn't terribly specific, and it is easy to compensate for partially missing ingredients, and comes out pretty decent no matter what I do to it that I was just assuming this recipe would work.
Unfortunately, I don't usually have bread flour on hand due to $. I buy the Prairie Gold in 50lb sacks, and occasionally use AP flour.
Interestingly, I tried my usual bread recipe with an overnight soaker and biga method and didn't feel like it improved the bread enough to be worth the trouble.
My go to recipe is this:
8 c. kefir (warm)
1/2c lecithin granules, added to kefir and let stand for 1 hr
In rubbermaid tub, mix dry ingredients:
up to 3.25 kg prairie gold (start with less, and add more as needed)
1/3 c. salt
2 c. gluten
1.5 c sucanat (or sugar, or brown sugar, or sometimes a mix of sugar and molasses or honey)
1/3 c. yeast
Add wet ingredients and mix:
kefir/lecithin
1 c (or more) oil
16 eggs, beaten (sometimes less, if I don't have that many)
After sitting for a while, divide dough into 2 4-loaf blobs and do the S&F thing, 2 cycles. Divide dough into loaf portions and rest 15 min. Form into loaves, rise, and bake. (My husband kneads the dough some at the mixing stage, but I don't since I'm not strong enough to handle that much dough.) Makes 8-1 lb 11oz loaves (a final size we like) with a little dough left over for sandwich buns or whatever.
But I'm getting bored with this recipe. It is a decent savory-sandwich loaf, but is not a good pbj (sweet) loaf like oatmeal bread is. I like the store-bought multigrain loaves, but haven't ventured into that territory, and I would LOVE to know how to make Dave's Killer Blues Bread, but I don't think that is going to happen anytime soon!
Thanks so much!
Liz
Elizabeth,
I just pulled a nice wholemeal oatmeal sandwich loaf out of the oven, so your post is timely. I will post my formula and process one of these days, but for now -- I've adopted the oatmeal method from Tartine 3: (1) Use half as much cooked oatmeal (by weight) as the total weight of flour in the formula, and, (2) incorporate the cooked, thoroughly cooled oatmeal into the dough after the first fold. That gives the dough a chance to develop some gluten/strength before kneecapping it with the oatmeal. The T3 formula is for SD and I'm using RWY+a little CY, so the rises are shorter than the SD timeline in T3. I think Robertson suggests incorporating the oatmeal after two folds for his SD version, but that's getting a little too far into the bulk for this quicker non-SD process.
And while I'm at it: I cook the oatmeal (regular rolled oats, not Quaker quick or anything) in twice the oats' weight in water, 20 min covered on low after initial boil. When it's mostly cooled, I spread it out on a plate to finish cooling and dry somewhat. Robertson's (correct) assumption is that half the water boils and evaporates away, leaving your total cooked oatmeal weight equal to twice the dry oatmeal you started with.
Hope that helps.
Tom
Hi Tom,
Are you replacing anything in the recipe with the oatmeal, or merely adding it by that calculation to the existing recipe?
Adding the oatmeal later makes good sense.
Thanks!
Liz
Liz,
I can't say that this formula evolved "by replacement". If I try to reconstruct the steps leading up to it in our ever-evolving weekly wholemeal sandwich loaf, I suppose we've "replaced" 1/3 of the wholemilled flour with cooked oatmeal. But it's not that simple, as any adjustment of total flour will tend to ripple through our (spreadsheet driven-) formulae. But the basic proportion is twice the weight of flour as cooked oatmeal. And, again from Chad Robertson, we lower the overall hydration slightly since cooked oatmeal brings water to the party that the wholemeal flour it's "replacing" didn't.
As I said earlier, I really need to carve out a few minutes to post our latest wholemeal porridge sandwich species. It's simple and delicious, especially with fresh milled flour.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Tom
We have baked a lot of these loaves and it is a good formula for you
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/21575/sourdough-100-whole-wheat-oatmeal-sandwich-bread-whole-grain-breads-can-be-soft-too
Thank you for pointing me in this direction. It will take a bit of working up for me, since I've never been a fan of sourdough breads, and so have never tried to make them. My husband likes sourdough, but he likes just about everything.
I would also like to work myself up to trying the raisin water yeast breads.
However, I have written down tons of procedural notes from this thread and others, and will hopefully have time to experiment, but maybe not so much now till after the holidays.
most people who don't like sourdough breads don't like them because they have tasted sour vinegar like bread. Actually sourdough is just bread fermented by wild yeasts. The sourness, or lack of it, depends on how it's made. I make sourdough breads that you wouldn't know were sourdough because they are sweet, not sour. You can use a younger levain, among other things to achieve this. There are a myriad of reasons why I think sourdough breads are better but a search will give you more reasons than I can. For one, they may be more digestable. I use commercial yeast mainly for croissants etc.
Would the raisin water yeast (and other fruit yeasts) be considered a type of sourdough then?
I think the biggest block for me trying something new is figuring out how to incorporate it into our existing rhythm before starting. Like kefir seems like rocket science to anyone I explain it to, but it isn't once you get the feel of it. My 8yo refreshes it and makes smoothies out of it daily.
Currently, I *normally* make 8 loaves in a batch. Unless I get inspired to make something else, like french sub rolls or something. But, we use anywhere from 0-2 loaves of bread per day, so I don't have a "bread making day" for the large batches. It is a matter of "When do I think we will run out of bread in the freezer?" and "When is the best day close to that to make more?" which is influenced by my husbands wacky work schedule, where he has random days off each week.
All of this is irrelevant, except I need to look around to figure out how to make something that is "ready to go when I am." I think I would like to start with the RWY, if that is flexible enough, but I haven't done enough reading to know.
I never "cook" the oatmeal when I make oatmeal bread. It is just measured into my mixing bowl and twice it's volume of hot water is added….just a soaker. Sometimes I leave it a hour but it does fine with 20 minutes soaking time. The oatmeal does not get as gelatinous as it does when actually cooked. I find this works really well, breads rise nicely, and the oats blend into the bread dough completely.
Hmm...this sounds familiar. I think my mom did something like this making bread, only maybe it was cornmeal she was soaking. Maybe this was how I made it years ago.
How hot do you start the water? I'm still thinking large batch recipe logistics, and it would take too long to cool a large enough batch for a lot of loaves in a regular mixing bowl to not have it turn somewhat gelatinous. Maybe soaking in a 13x9. Thanks!
Cooling the soaker doesn't seem to be a problem no matter how big the batch is. I heat water in the teapot until it is near boiling but pouring the water onto the room temperature oats in the room temperature bowl cools it substantially. Then it sits at room temperature (about 62 degrees this time of year) for 20 or 30 minutes. When I start to build the dough, I usually add buttermilk which it is cold out of the refrigerator. By the time I throw in buttermilk, honey, and start to add flour the mixture is very safe for the "wee yeasty beasties."
Sometimes I add some chopped walnuts or toasted sunflower seeds to my oatmeal bread. Part of a batch can become cinnamon raisin oatmeal bread. I make 4 to 6 loaves at a time in my "inside oven" but have made as many as 8 to 10 when using the wood fired oven. Oatmeal bread is such a wonderful, traditional, "comfort" bread….there are many recipes and many ways to enhance the flavor of the bread if you wish. Adding a little coarse cornmeal to the soaker is fun, too. Adds a bit of sweet corn flavor and pretty little golden flecks in the bread. Happy Baking!
Cornmeal...I may add some of that. I was thinking about adding millet. I used to love millet in bread, and haven't done that for a long time.
I just made one batch with completely uncooked, not even soaked in hot water oats, and it cam e out beautiful. The ingredients did not seem very different, just the method, and I will see about adapting to larger scale batches.
The method was:
Mix to shaggy mass, everything except salt.
Let sit for 1/2 hour
Add salt, knead 5 min, rest 5 min
Repeat knead-rest 3 times.
Let dough rise approx 1 hr.
Shape into loaves--a very wet, loose, pliable, tries to escape from your hands kind of dough. Used water all over hands/dough when shaping, instead of oil which I usually use.
Beautiful loaf, very soft. But my son said it didn't taste as good as the bricks from before. Tastes kinda generic, which is fine some days. May try method with other recipes, or try to tweak this one to taste better.
the place where I come from it is used as a last resort. Wild yeasts are present on a variety of things like raisins, grains etc. For me it is easier to use old dough or to have a liquid levain for baking. I am not into projects. :-)