Libby Joyce’s Oatmeal Bread
I admit, I’ve succumbed to a quarantine cliche — I’ve baked my own bread. And I’m proud of it. Damn proud.
This isn’t some fad bread. I grew up with this bread. When I visited my friend, Meg, her mom would always have this bread on hand. She baked it routinely. This is a feat in any era with any number of people in your home, but I think it’s a particular feat with four kids in the 90’s, which is both before and after when bread baking at home was commonplace, a period I estimate to be post-1928 with the dawn of sliced bread and pre-COVID-19.
I loved this bread so much that one year when Meg asked me what I wanted for my birthday, a loaf of this bread was my sole request. It’s that good.
This bread makes insanely good toast. It keeps forever when frozen. It up-levels anything it encounters from salted butter to peanut butter and bananas to decadent grilled cheese. The only type of “starter” that’s required is your own initiative as a “self-starter” of delicious bread (sorry not sorry, sourdough).
Thankfully, Libby Joyce was kind enough to share her recipe. Is it the greatest thing since sliced bread? Possibly. Is sliced bread the benchmark against which all other inventions in humanity should be measured? Arguable.
A particular shoutout to friend of the blog Kim Rachmeler for the gifting of a KitchenAid mixer. It makes mixing the volume of dough a lot easier and a whole universe of carb-related recipes possible. Thank you, Kim!
RECIPE - Makes 3 loaves. It’s a lot of bread, but it’s really good bread. Cut in half if you’re short on flour.
INGREDIENTS
10-12 Cups bread flour
2 Cups oats (plus extra)
3 Cups whole wheat flour (optional; note: I did not use)
4 Cups boiling water
2/3 Cup lukewarm water
1 Cup Sugar
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
1 Tablespoon salt
1 Packet Yeast
RECIPE
Add oats to boiling water. After mixture has gotten a bit thick, add butter. If your oats are super soupy, add some more oats until the mixture can be described as thick. Once butter has melted, add the 2/3 c lukewarm water. Cool to 120-130 degrees. While oat mixture is cooling, add whole wheat flour (if you are using; I did not), sugar, salt, yeast and a few cups of the bread flour. Mix.
Once oat mixture has cooled to 120-130, add to flour mixture and stir well. Add bread flour slowly until the mixer can take no more. For me, this was 10 cups of flour. At that point, I thought my KitchenAid mixer might break with the strain, and I had flour all over the floor. With every belabored turn of the dough hook, I could tell I was hitting the danger zone.
Your kitchen may look like this. You may think that this has all be a terrible mistake. You may wonder how could you have wasted 10+ cups of bread flour. You may be right. You may be wrong. You will put your head down and soldier on.
Let dough rise to top of mixing bowl (note: I was already at the top of my mixing bowl, so I skipped this). Put some flour on the counter and place the dough on the flour and knead the dough adding more flour until the consistency is right (it’s firm, but still a bit bouncy). At this point, even when I added flour and manually kneaded it in, the dough wasn’t really absorbing anything. I could tell I was hitting a saturation point.
Saturated dough.
Place the kneaded dough in a large, greased pan and cover (note: I did not have a pan that was large enough, so I split it and put it into the two largest bowls I could find). Once the dough has doubled in size, remove from the pan, knead again and divide the dough into three loaves.
This is more dough than I have ever had at one time.
Put each loaf into its own pan and punch the dough down so it is evenly placed throughout the pan.
Not good lookin,’ just good cookin’.
Let the bread rise until it is about 2” above the pans. This will feel magical and maybe a bit alarming because you will wonder if the dough will ever stop rising, and how much bigger it’s going to get (not much bigger).
Libby Joyce uses non-stick pans and recommends preheating the oven to 350 degrees and baking the bread for 28 minutes. If you have shiny metal pans, preheat the oven to 375 and grease the bread pans. If you have glass tupperware containers of various sizes (my situation), heat to 350 degrees, grease the pans thoroughly, and start checking 28 minutes in. My loaves baked in 45-50 min. The amount of cooking time might be different in your oven. Remove the loaves when the top and edges are golden brown throughout.
Take the bread out of the oven and let it cool for 15 minutes on racks. After 15 minutes, take loaves out of the pans and let them cool on the racks completely (I don’t have a rack, so I just left the bread in the pans until cool). Wrap tightly in plastic bags and freeze whatever you don’t want to use within a week. Do not store in refrigerator because that will dry the bread out.
NOTE: When letting the dough rise, you want to cover it so it doesn’t dry out. You can use a damp kitchen towel, or greased plastic wrap or, if your pan is big enough, a lid to the pan. When the bread is rising in the pans, Libby Joyce puts them them in a cold oven and places a pan of warm water on the bottom rack. This is to provide moisture so the bread doesn’t dry out. I didn’t use water, but I lightly brushed my dough with vegetable oil on top to try to seal in the moisture. Remember to remove the bread and pan of water before you preheat the oven!
Man cannot live on the smell of bread alone, but if he could, he’d probably choose this bread to smell.
X-treme bread close-up!
The ultimate toast! Photo and recipe procurement credit: Meg Zuehl (nee Joyce).
