Milk and honey loaf with oats, soft tender and brioche like on the inside and crusty on the outside. Its perfect for toast, with salted butter and drizzled with some more honey.
The smell that fills the house when you bake bread is always so wonderful.
This loaf is my go-to for breakfast when i am not baking my other favourite loaf.
My partner tells me that he thinks the flavour is so good that it doesn’t need butter. I take this as a huge compliment as he usually spreads so much butter on his toast.
It is was the perfect recipe to use some of the local honey i got when i went to spend the afternoon with a group of bee keepers recently.
It had been a dream of mine for the longest time to get to see inside a hive.
I was so thankful that i had the opportunity to tag along with my step father’s friend to his bee keeping group at Buckfast abbey.
Their hives are kept in some woods close by and it was magical. We then went and visited a hive and one of the group members house’s, and i managed to take a few photos.
Making the milk and honey oat bread
Initially i intended to knead the milk and honey dough by hand, but as recipes tend to often evolve with me, half way through i decided to make the dough with a consistency of a brioche.
This makes it quite wet and it a bit messy to work with. So i quickly moved the mixture to a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook to do the dirty work for me.
milk and honey oat bread
Ingredients
- 420 grams strong white bread flour (plus more)
- 60 grams porridge oats plus more for top
- 5 g salt
- 7 g fast action dried yeast (one sachet)
- 5 tbsp honey (runny)
- 200 ml whole milk
- 2 eggs
- 2 tbsp butter (room temp)
Instructions
- Heat the milk until it is warm to the touch, then in the bowl of a stand mixer add the flour, oats and salt and mix. Add the yeast and then add the milk and honey and start mixing, add one egg and mix then add the next and turn the mixer up and knead, it will seem really wet but keep kneading until it stops sticking to the side of the bowl about 5 minutes. Now add the butter and a little more flour (2 tbsp) and keep kneading for 3 minutes. The dough will be wet like a Brioche but should hold together and be elastic (you can add more flour if you wish but I like a more open texture the extra moisture gives). Place in a oiled bowl and cover and leave to rise for 1 to one and a half hours. Once doubled in size. Tip out onto a floured surface and knock the air out and shape into a ball. Leave to rise again for 1 hour. Preheat the oven to 180c. Brush the loaf with milk and sprinkle on some oats then score the top with a knife.
Place a tin in the bottom of the oven and pour in a little water and put the loaf in on the shelf above and bake for approx 40 minutes.
Another honey loaf i like is by local milk and it is made with buttermilk
So, this one is going straight on to my to-do list, as I’m such a sucker for bread!!!
This sounds really yummy! Is it possible to bake it in a Dutch oven and leave out the pan of water in the oven?
i haven’t tried it that way, but i think it would work yes