100% WW Oat Porridge

Here is my latest attempt at the Laurel's Kitchen porridge bread. This one used 1/3 Kamut khorasan, for extensibility; 2/3 hard red winter, for strength.

All the flour was freshly milled on the finest Mockmill setting. I used a relatively coarse (kitchen strainer) screen to sift the big bran and added it to the porridge. The oats were run through my mill on the widest setting that would still grab them and beat them up a little. I used my ultrafine Chinese soup-skimmer strainer to sift off the finest, most powdery portion of the milled oats to add to my catch-all tub of 'white' flour and used the rest in the porridge.

I did a 1.5 x recipe which used 240g of dry oat and 1,125 g flour. Half was given a single bulk proof, then shaped into buns, proofed, brushed with milk, sprinkled with sesame seeds before baking. They took 15 minutes at 400 F and were soft and delicious, although kind of enormous.

The other half of the dough was bulk proofed twice, then shaped as a batard and put into an improvised (cloth lined basket) banneton to final proof.There the bottom seam opened up and I messed about with it and pinched it back together, which ended up tightening the crumb on the bottom of the loaf.

I turned it out on a cookie sheet, scored it, and put it in the oven on top of a pizza stone at 450 F with a towel-filled steamer. At 20 minutes I removed the cookie sheet and steam pan. I took it out after another 30 minutes.

In retrospect 450 was too high a heat for this moist, honey-enriched dough. By the time the internal temp hit 208, the crust was overbaked and got a little scorched on the bottom at the ends.

The crumb is fine, even, soft, moist, and very pleasing. This is a really nice everyday bread for toast and sandwiches. It's also good sliced thin, toasted until crisp, and dipped in coffee.

Mandatory crumb shot:

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