Oatmeal Homemade Bread Recipe

So you are wondering if oatmeal homemade bread is healthier than store-bought? Oh yes baby, it is. And it's so easy to make! This bread recipe took me 2 hours, but most of that was waiting for it to get nice and fluffy.

Ok, so I just have to say that this oatmeal homemade bread recipe was SO very easy to make. You will see in the photos below the very few steps it took to make it. I think it was very easy for me because I have a KitchenAid Mixer that I use to knead the dough and that takes all of five minutes when I can put away the ingredients used to make the bread.

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Why is Homemade Bread Healthier?

It's so worth it to make your own homemade oatmeal bread. Do you ever look at the ingredients on your loaf of bread and see the following: Bromated. High Fructose Corn Syrup. Azodicarbonamide, Mono & Di-glycerides, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate (SSL), and Diacetyl Esters of Tartaric Acid (DATEM), and Lecithin? Yikes! These ingredients are not good people! They are just preservatives to keep the bread moist or they are additives to sweeten the bread or adjust the taste in some way.

So what are your options when you need to buy bread? Obviously not everyone has the time to make their own homemade bread. I hardly have the time but have found a really great and easy recipe that allows me to do so. You can thank me later when your family devours the first batch in one day. The night I made this bread the first time, my kids ate half the loaf before bed with just butter on it.

Sometimes you can find organic bread on sale in the grocery store and beats making your own bread if you don't have time. Vermont Bread Company has minimal ingredients and is located in New England. Most of the time, however, organic bread is more than $5 for one small loaf! And it doesn’t even last very long.

But the reason why cheaper bread lasts so long is because there are such gross ingredients in them. In the post 5 Reasons Why Homemade Bread is Better I talk about why homemade bread is healthier. Below is a list of common chemicals in commercial bread. Caution: may cause you to become dizzy and lose your balance.

Common Chemicals in Commercial Bread

Bromate (or Potassium Bromate) is a flour "improver" that strengthens dough and allows for greater oven spring and higher rising in the oven. if too much is used, or the bread is not baked long enough or at a high enough temperature, then a residual amount will remain, which is known to cause cancer.
High Fructose Corn Syrup is a man-made sweetener that doesn’t break down in the body the same way regular sugar does. Often it settles on our waistlines and causes cravings for more, which creates weight gain. It’s a vicious cycle.
Azodicarbonamide is a bleaching agent. Besides making the bread whiter by reacting with cartonene in the flour, it is an orange, odorless, powder. Ew.
Diacetyl Tartaric Acid Esters of Monoglycerides (DATEM) is another dough conditioner used to improve volume and uniformity. It is considered safe by the FDA, but a study in 2002, on rats, it showed "heart muscle fibrosis and adrenal overgrowth".
Mono & Di-glycerides are partially hydrogenated oils. If you haven’t heard of this I dare say you’ve been living under a rock.
Lecithin is obtained from soy, which means genetically modified plants. Ugh.

If you can’t find bread with ingredients you can pronounce, try this recipe below. It’s so easy, I promise.

Easy Oatmeal Homemade Bread Recipe

So after you add your ingredients to your bowl - whether you are using your hands, a KitchenAid Mixer or a bread machine, you still want to put the liquids on the bottom and the dry ingredients on top. Then make a little well in the flour for the yeast - you don't want it to land into the water until you are mixing.

Once the dough is kneaded, just transfer it to a lightly-oiled bowl and cover with a few towels and keep away from a draft for about 1 hour. Perfect time to go get the kids from the bus!

After an hour, take the dough and turn it onto an oiled surface and shape it into a loaf. This shouldn't take more than 1-2 seconds because at this point the dough is very pliable. I like using metal pans - I tried to use a silicone bread pan and my bread was super wide. It still tasted awesome though!

I let the bread sit in the bread pan and simply placed a plastic container over it that actually fit quite perfectly over the bread pan, just to allow the bread room to rise. You just need to use something that won't stick to the top of the bread as it rises or it WILL deflate when you take it off!

At this point you just put the bread in the oven for 35 minutes. Be prepared for a lot of whining and "can I have bread" until you take the bread out and it cools off. All of this time is very exciting but also frustrating for very excited kids!

Oatmeal Homemade Bread Ingredients

1 1/4 cups warm water
1/4 cup honey
3 cups bread flour
1 cup oatmeal
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp yeast
1 tablespoon powdered buttermilk

What do I do with Yeast?

As long as you don't kill your yeast with hot water and keep it stored properly you will be good! I like to buy mine in bulk from Costco and then I freeze most of it, keeping a small amount in an airtight container in the fridge.

What is the difference between active dry and instant yeast?

Active dry yeast needs to be dissolved in water before using, while instant yeast can be mixed right into dry ingredients. When you are making a recipe in the bread machine, you want instant yeast. I prefer active dry yeast because mixing it with water allows me to know that it's still fresh and active. There's nothing worse than mixing up a batch of bread dough only to have it refuse to rise!

What about my flour?

Bread flour is just flour with a higher protein content or gluten than all-purpose flour which helps breads rise more and come out fluffier. But you can still make a high-quality loaf of bread with all-purpose flour. In fact, that's all I use for my bread!

How can I make sure my bread rises properly?

Sometimes my house is pretty chilly, especially in the winter and I worry that my dough isn't going to rise properly. Here are a few of my tricks I use to make sure that happens.

Use the oven. If you oven has a “proof” setting you can use that and place your covered dough in there to rise. I think I have that setting but I always forget and I just turn the warm function on for a bit to warm it up and then turn it off before I put the dough in the oven. In the springtime, I usually can just leave the oven door open so the light emits enough warmth to make the bread rise.
We have cupboard lights that light up the counters. I set up a little pile and set the bowl of dough on it so it's right under the light.
On top of a heating pad. I've never tried this but you can place your pan on top of the heating pad on medium!