There’s Dough and Then There’s Dough: Madame Thermomix’s Easy Oatmeal Bread
“Hi Mrs Jones, would you like to order a loaf of oatmeal bread? I’ll deliver it on Saturday with your paper.”
It seems that I was a rather enterprising child, delivering newspapers door to door with a classic American paper route at barely twelve years old and selling homemade oatmeal bread to my customers on a weekly basis. It paid off, though, as I bought a sailboat with my “dough” when I was thirteen. I turned my dough into “dough.”
Back then was before the invention of the bread machine so I was making my loaves start to finish myself, kneading this type of dough by hand in Mom’s kitchen. It was a warm, friendly place, especially suited to bread making. Despite being in a 200-year-old house with various drafts in other rooms, Mom’s kitchen was a place full of love and life, a warm nurturing place where bread flourished and rose without a second thought.
My kitchen today has not yet reached those dizzy heights of nurturing and nourishment. My bread doesn’t rise well unless it’s placed in a tepid oven, and I lack the patience to wait long enough for it to flourish. During Thermomix demonstrations in other people’s homes I am repeatedly amazed at how quickly and fully bread dough rises in such short time. Let’s face it, I’m green with envy.
But now I am baking brilliantly risen loaves with a delightfully fluffy crumb and a wonderfully crispy crust. I figured out the crust thing a while ago. It’s up to moisture in the oven. I actually asked at the bakery in our local supermarket how they got such a crispy crust, and was told that they baked their bread in steam ovens. Not having a steam oven a home I achieved the same results by placing a pan of boiling water in the oven along with my bread and voilà ! Beautifully crusty bread.
The crumb of my bread remained dense and unsatisfying. My husband commented on it (albeit gently) at every loaf and surreptitiously made his breakfast sandwiches with store-bought loaves. The perfect soft fluffy crumb continued to elude me. Until this weekend when we stopped into a cooking shop and saw a pack of Bread Improver on the shelf with the bread flour. “Pray tell, what is this Bread Improver? Does it really make your bread nicer?” I was assured that it gave extra lift to the dough and created loads of little air bubbles to give you fluffy, soft bread. “Sounds good to me, I’ll take it.”
Lo and behold, my very first loaf of bread came out perfectly. Crispy crust and fluffy crumb. My husband made his breakfast sandwiches with it and ate it at table. Dipped it into his thick blended Thermomix soup and came back for more. Toasted it at breakfast on the weekend. Slathered it in orange marmalade and licked his fingers. Success! I have fulfilled my duties as a Domestic Goddess. I may rest in peace.
So what is Bread Improver? Amazingly enough, it’s our good old winter friend, Vitamin C, mixed with some dextrose and a few other things that are not too awful to consume. Some commercially-produced instant yeast contains Bread Improver already, and I know in my heart of hearts that supermarket breads contain them. They have to, let’s face it, they’re too fluffy not to. Well, that’s my opinion anyway.
But now that I have discovered the benefits of Bread Improver for the bread I bake in my kitchen I don’t mind other people using it. If it works for me and it works for you and we like our home baked bread, more power to us!
Madame Thermomix’s Easy Oatmeal Bread
Ingredients
1 sachet instant yeast
30 g dark brown soft sugar
260 g water
30 g porridge oats
400 g strong white bread flour
1 ½ tsp salt
1 tsp Bread Improver (optional)
- Put all ingredients into Thermomix bowl. Mix 15 to 20 seconds/Speed 3 until the dough comes together and comes away from the sides of the bowl.
- Knead 2 mins/Dough setting.
- Turn the Thermomix bowl upside down over a board or a clean surface. Open the base to release the blade and let it drop down with the dough. Remove the blade.
- Shape into a loaf and place into a loaf tin or onto a baking sheet. Let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, at least 30 minutes but up to 60 – 90 minutes. Patience is a virtue in bread making!
- Bake 25 mins at 180° or until the crust is golden brown and the bottom sounds hollow when tapped.
Bon appétit !
