Oatmeal Bread

I decided to start with oatmeal bread for a few reasons. The first is that I thought it sounded good, which is always important in a new bake. The second is that I think this recipe is a great example of the kind of instructions this recipe book provides, namely just vague enough to be fun. So to start, here is the original recipe, as written in the book, and then my initial reaction to it.

Let's break this down into ingredients 

• 1 pint Oatmeal
• 1 quart Boiling Water
• 1 cup Molasses
• 1/4 teaspoon Baking Soda
• 8 grams yeast
• 1 teaspoon Salt
• 2 quarts flour
• Baking pans

Here's how I'm going to tackle this

Alright, I've read the ingredients and made some guesses on what they might actually mean. Now I want to lay out my plan for how it's going to go together. This is all written before starting and then the colorful text is updates as I work.

Put one quart of water in a pot and wait until it boils.
I like this part because it's hard to mess up boiling water.

Then I'm going to measure out one pint of oatmeal. I'm using steel cut oats because they are already at my house and instant oatmeal feels wrong.
Instant Oatmeal wasn't available until 1966 so this was a good guess.

I don't know what scalding means but I'm guessing that water logging the oats would be bad so I'm going to throw it in, count to 10, and drain it.
I ended up counting to 20 because 10 felt too short.

I'm pretty sure molasses is not the same thing as maple syrup although my brain wants it to be.
It definitely isn't, I think it smells like barbecue sauce and my husband thinks it smells like raisins. 

I think it may be more similar to honey.
That might not be wrong. 

So I'm going to check the grocery store for it and if I can't find it I might replace it with a half cup of honey and a half cup of maple syrup.
Found it and it's pretty expensive, $5 for 15 ounces.

My biggest concern is having the wrong consistency and then having it mess up the texture and have the mixture be too wet or dry. 
The consistency is most like corn syrup. 

When it's measured out I'm going to add the baking soda and stir it in before adding it to the oatmeal.

At this point I was pretty concerned that kneading would be awful and sticky

I'm not sure how much dry yeast equates to one half yeast cake but I think this will end up making two small loaves so I'm going to use 8 grams of yeast and hope for the best.
It made one big loaf and it didn't rise at all.

Because it's not in cake form I'm not going to dissolve it. The ingredients seem like they will be wet enough from the oatmeal that I don't want to add more water until I see what the flour does. So I'm going to put the flour in a bowl, add a line of yeast and a line of salt in opposite sides of the bowl and then add the oatmeal.

Fun fact, salt can deactivate yeast. That's why they go on opposite sides until everything is mixed. Thanks Paul Hollywood!

Foreshadowing!

I don’t understand why the directions don't say to knead the dough at this point.
Turns out it's because it's a crumbly trap!

It specifically says not to knead it later, but I've never worked with a yeast dough that didn't need to be kneaded at least once so I'm going to knead it and see how it goes.
It didn't stay together, at all. I eventually added water but I couldn't incorporate all the flour. It was very dense and at no point did my kneading seem to do much of anything but make it denser and angrier. On the plus side, it was a good arm workout.

I didn't want this to come to fisticuffs, but it did.

After the kneading I'm going to put it in a bowl with a damp cloth over the top and let it rise until it's about double in size.
Again, it didn't even think about rising even a little bit.

Then, I'm going to stir it with a knife, for some reason.
I more just poked it with a knife because I didn't want to make it angry or make it fall apart.

I think what they might be going for here is knocking some of the air out. I guess a knife accomplishes this as much as anything else would.
There is a chance that the dough has created a void where no air exists at all. So this was probably a bad assumption.

If I didn't need this to rise it wouldn't look half bad. Pun intended

Then a quick shape into two loaves and into tins to rise again. 
Nope, only one loaf, either because my pan is bigger than old timey pans, or the flour I couldn't incorporate made the whole thing smaller. 

No second knead, per instructions. 
And because my arms are still burning from round one.

The next step calls for a "moderate" baking temperature. I'm very curious what that would be. The last loaf of bread I made called for a 450 degree oven, which is about as hot as my non-commercial oven gets. So, does moderate mean really keeping the temp low, say 250 degrees, or back in the day was 350-400 moderate because fire and coals are both hot? I'm going to go with 325, and that is largely just a guess.
I changed my mind and went with 350. It's getting late and I don't want to slow cook bread. It cooked for about 45 minutes and it seems done.

I'm pleasantly surprised by how much this looks like bread

Verdict

The loaf rose while baking which was a pleasant surprise. This is usually the role of baking soda, so maybe the yeast was ineffective, but the baking soda saved the day? I cut off a small piece and had a bite. The oatmeal gives a nice texture and isn't crunchy, which is good. The overall taste is similar to a traditional brown bread and I think it would be a nice breakfast with butter or jam. I don't think it would make a good sandwich bread, and to me, it does smell vaguely of barbecue sauce because that is all I've ever eaten molasses in.

Take Aways

• I am still unsure if this bread was meant to rise. It is so dense it seems unlikely, but the density could be an error on my part.
• I googled "scalding in cooking" and it normally means to bring to just below the boiling point. This recipe specifically says to use boiling water, so I do not know if what I did was correct. If I was a betting lady I'd say probably not.
• Oatmeal now and oatmeal then are two different things even if you're not using instant. Old timey oatmeal needed to be cooked as long as possible, occasionally several hours or even overnight. So, not sure if what I have is anything similar to the original
• If I keep doing recipes like this regularly I may one day have arms that look 1/4 as good as Michelle Obama's and then I will have found true happiness
• I realized after I was done that I entirely skipped the second rise. I'm okay with this, as I don't believe rising would have occurred.

This cookbook also provides tips on being a housewife. I edited the one below to make it more accurate.

"Her house is well arranged because, both her and her partner/roommates make it a priority. it is a reflection of her mind. There is a place for everything, and it might does not ruffle her serenity to have things upset at times. She might knows where they belong, and can easily put them back again, or not, as she sees fit."