More Whole Wheat Oatmeal

I’m starting to get my hands around the weights and characteristics of whole wheat oatmeal bread. If you remember back to a couple of earlier attempts, I basically mixed 1 cup of old fashioned oats with 2 cups of boiling water and a pinch of salt, and added it to a 60% hydrated, 1kg whole wheat bread formula. Not very scientific, and not very accurate.

So today, I weighed the oats and the water; and come up with the following formula and 70% hydration, including the oats as the part of the flour for the baker’s percentage. Thinking about that as I write it, I’m not sure if that is the right method, but it worked for today. Another way of thinking about this is to not count the oats, and if that were the case, then the formula is 76.8% hydration.

Here are the numbers for the formula:

850 grams whole wheat flour
150 grams general purpose white flour
40 grams of honey
30 grams of olive oil
20 grams of molasses
20 grams of salt
10 grams of yeast
568 grams water

Mix and let stand.

90 grams of old fashioned oats (1 cup)
200 grams of boiling water (1 cup)

Mix and let cool. Add to the dough and mix for 10 minutes on KitchenAid 2 (low).

Six folds, bulk fermentation; six folds; second fermentation; push down; cut in half; shape two boules; let proof for one hour; score and bake.

The dough was software and sticky, but easy to work with. The proofed boules were very tall and tender, but they were not over proofed and they did not fall in when I scored them. I am becoming a big, big fan of the six folds.

Lot’s of fun. I will update this with more thoughts on how well the bread works as toast and how well it last.