Fermented Oats Sourdough Bread - 100% whole grain sourdough using a rolled oats (oatmeal) starter!
This bread came about through a moment of inspiration and an experiment I couldn’t resist! Thanks to the wonderful Alison Kay and Andrea Huehnerhoff from the Ancestral Kitchen Podcast I’ve been expanding my repertoire of fermented foods, and when I heard of fermented oats porridge I had to try it! It wasn’t long before I realised this might be a lovely way to raise a loaf of bread, and it is!
After making a few different versions of this bread, I shared my experience with it over on the Whole Grain Sourdough Baker group on Facebook (that post is here) and the response was wonderful! A few of the bakers there were familiar with eating and baking with fermented oats, but the idea was new for many of us and lots more experiments and sharing of individual versions of this style of bread ensued. So much fun!
Fast forward a couple of weeks and I had to make a video on this bread. It’s clearly well-loved, so why not share it even further!
To make fermented oats (for porridge and for the bread starter in this recipe):
The amounts given below make more fermented oats than are needed for this recipe, but it keeps very well in the fridge, and I’m sure you’ll want to make this recipe more than once! Fermented oats porridge (oatmeal) is also very delicious, so you could try making that with your leftover starter oats as well. You can eat them just as they are (overnight oats style), or you could cook them with more water or milk to make a hot porridge/oatmeal breakfast dish. Just add some fruit or any other of your favourite toppings!
For this batch I used:
300g traditional rolled oats
600g water
2 teaspoons of sourdough starter
Mix everything in a bowl and leave it to ferment at room temperature, just as you would any other sourdough starter. In my cool winter kitchen, it was quite safe for me to leave them overnight, but if your weather is very hot you may want to use cold water or ferment them earlier in the day and put them in the fridge when ready so they don’t become overly sour.
As I demonstrated in the video, the best way to test if your oats are ready for baking bread is to taste them! It should be pleasantly sour and fizzy on the tongue.
Store your fermented oats in the fridge until you are ready to use them if you are not making the bread immediately. They will become more sour and less fizzy with age.
Ingredients for the bread:
(all measures are metric)
350g / approx 2.5 cups whole wheat flour (mine was freshly milled using my Mockmill 200)
2 tablespoons ground linseeds/flaxseeds
1 tsp salt
1.5 generous cups (about 450g) of the fermented oats mixture
220g water (Approximate amount. This very much depends on your flour! Start with half a cup and add more as needed. The dough should be quite moist and easy to mix in the bowl. Use less water if you would like a drier bread, however, you can expect a less open crumb structure).
Method: It doesn’t get any easier!
(link to full video demonstration on YouTube)
Add the flour, ground linseeds/flax and salt to a medium-large bowl and mix thoroughly.
Add the fermented oats and water and mix the dough until well combined.
Cover the dough and ferment for anywhere between 4-10 hours, depending on your ambient temperature, the temperature of your ingredients and the individual leavening power of your fermented oats starter.
Once the dough is visibly risen and looking bubbly (if you have a glass bowl this is easy to see!), shape the dough and place it into a greased loaf pan. My loaf pan is quite small with 1 litre capacity.
Cover the dough so it doesn’t dry out, then proof until it has increased in size between 50-80% (aim for a slightly smaller rise in summer, whole grain sourdough over ferments so easily in hot weather!).
Bake the bread inside a covered roaster (if possible) for 50 minutes at 210°C / 410°F. If you don’t have a roaster to bake your loaf in, you could spray the top of the loaf with water or add a tray with ice cubes in the bottom of your oven to generate some steam around the bread as it bakes (this gives a nice thin, crispy crust).
Once golden brown and baked thoroughly (the bottom should sound hollow when tapped), cool the bread for at least a few hours, or overnight before cutting.
I hope you enjoy this recipe (and the video!) and give fermented oats sourdough bread a try! This recipe seems to be so flexible, I’m keen to see how it goes with other flour combinations and techniques (though I do love my ‘easy everyday’ style method).
Thank you so much for reading. Please share my video or this blog post with others who may be interested, and let me know if you have any questions or comments below :)
Looking for more?
Find out about my Mockmill 200 and where you can purchase one from just about anywhere in the world!
(There are discounts available in some locations).If you would like to support my work you can ‘buy me a coffee’ here (big thanks to all of you who have :)
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