Oat Bread with Wild Yeast

The last thing I expected when I put this recipe together was that the end result would be a loaf with such a tender moist crumb. A light loaf speckled with flecks of oats, a delicious flavour, slightly sweet with a small amount of honey, I doubt I will be able to judge its keeping qualities because I suspect it will be eaten up for too quickly.

I began by toasting the oats, in a hot oven, 200C for around ten minutes, just long enough to deepen the colour a little.

To make 3 loaves you will need:

for the Ferment,
100g of starter from the fridge
150g of Strong White Flour
50g of Strong Wholewheat Flour
200g of water

For the Main Dough,
All of the Ferment
 800g of Strong White Flour
 150g Strong Wholewheat Flour
200g of Porridge Oats
1 tablespoon of Honey
750g of water
21g of salt

Begin by putting together the ferment ingredients, cover and leave for 8 hours, the ferment is ready to add to the main dough ingredients when it is showing good signs of activity see fig 1. Add the ferment to the all the main dough ingredients apart from the salt, mix together sufficiently to form a soft dough. Leave covered overnight.
Add the salt to the dough, I do this in my food mixer and it takes little more than a minute of mixing on a medium speed. Leave the dough to rise, stretching and folding the dough (this technique is described in earlier bread recipe posts) every hour for three hours. Being careful not to knock out the gas that has been formed during the last three hours, form the dough into three loaves and leave to rise for a final time before baking them at 220C for 30-35 minutes.