No-Knead Oat and Honey Sandwich Loaf

Given both my great love for bread and my constant desire to try my hand at making the staples I usually pick up at the store, I am slightly surprised that it’s taken me this long to bake some sandwich bread. Part of the delay was that I didn’t have loaf pans, but my sweet husband gave me some for Christmas, so now I am in business! For my first attempt, I wanted to make a loaf that incorporated some of our favorite things about the breads we usually eat, and oats and honey were at the top of the list (with 7-grain right behind it!). This bread is intensely rich and yeasty, almost decadent. We devoured it within a few days, and it’s definitely going on the keeper recipe list!

The best part is that it’s a no-knead bread, which means that, with a little foresight, I can have it ready to eat the next day with very little actual work involved. That’s my kind of recipe.

You start by mixing the dry ingredients and then stirring in the wet ingredients for a few minutes, just until all of the flour is moistened. It will look like a blob, but it is a blob with great promise.

This is what the dough looks like after it’s risen for 18 hours: very bubbly and puffy.

Here you can see how much it’s risen. Plenty.

At this point, you roll the dough out onto a lightly floured (and/or oated) surface and shape it into a loaf. Easy!

Then you place it in your greased loaf pan for the second rise. Make sure the pan is greased, since there is nothing sadder than a beautiful loaf of bread that won’t come out of the pan!

This is what it will look like after 2-3 hours of rising. I love how it expands over the edges of the pan.

Then, the only thing left to do is bake it! Here is my loaf, fresh out of the oven. It smelled so amazing, and tasted even better. I am so glad I can use the no-knead method for sandwich bread. Stay tuned for more experiments!

No-Knead Oat and Honey Sandwich Loaf
Adapted from NoKnead.com

1 cup wheat flour
3/4 cup quick oats or oat flour
2 1/2 cups white flour
1/4 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
2 teaspoons salt
1 3/4 cups water

-Combine all the dry ingredients (white flour, wheat flour, quick oats or oat flour, yeast, salt) in the large bowl (3 quart or larger) and stir with a mixing spoon for about 15 seconds or more.
-Combine water and honey in a separate bowl and stir until the honey is dissolved into the water.
-Add water and honey mixture to the dry ingredients bowl and stir for about 3 minutes, or until the flour is thoroughly moistened (it won’t look that good, but that doesn’t matter).
-Cover the top of the bowl loosely with plastic wrap and let sit on counter top for about 12 to 18 hours; the dough will look bubbly on the top when it is ready.
-Generously sprinkle flour and/or oats onto a cutting board and slowly pour the dough from the bowl on to the floured surface, using a spatula to help it peel off the sides of the bowl.
-Sprinkle a little flour on top of the dough and rub your hands together with flour. Gently stretch the dough out to a rectangle shape.
-Roll up the dough from one end to the other.
-Place the dough into a lightly greased bread pan (seam side down).
-Let dough rise until it is a bit above the top of the bread pan (about double in size or 1.5 to 2 hours).
-Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees and place bread in the oven for 40 to 45 minutes.
-Remove bread from oven and let it cool on a cooling rack.
-Get out your butter and jam and dig in!