“Eat Oats!”

“If you do not have the type of bread you like in your house, eat crackers. If you do not have bread, eat cereal; eat oats; sardines.” - Silveria Jacobs, Prime Minister of Sint Maarten in the Caribbean (addressing her people about approaching COVID-19 restrictions) and my latest favourite quote. Ref: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmanuelfelton/coronavirus-viral-caribbean-video-message-sint-maarten

Oats have featured more prominently again lately. They are no longer just a thing of boring childhood breakfasts or up-and-go-mueslies, because we’ve all been eating from the pantry. And we’ve all probably eaten oats, just as Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs suggested.

COVID-19 has changed eating around the globe in a very short time.

In terms of bread, oats are generally an added ingredient, rather than a primary source of flavour and nutrition.1 That said, they’re also a pretty awesome addition to the bakery’s flavour basics (and an essential ingredient in one of my favourite sourdoughs, the porridge bread).

Oats are rich in proteins and unsaturated fats and have a good amount of B vitamins. Oats have a high starch content and provide a generous amount of slow-release carbohydrates. They are rich in fibre, notably the soluble kind, and also rich in thiamin, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc, manganese, selenium, and iron. Not bad, eh.

Porridge Bread

Porridge bread is a good way of making another delicious bread by adding cheap ingredients (that you probably have in your pantry!). Cooking out the oats causes them to gelatinise, which allows you to get more moisture into your bread, resulting in a much softer crumb, and an awesome flavour.

Basically (and here, I’m assuming you have experience making sourdough…), if you want to make porridge bread:

RATIOS: 1kg flour; 650g water; 150g starter; 250g cooked, cooled porridge; 20g salt

Add cooked, cooled porridge (oats) to your final dough. NOTE: You can also ferment the oats before cooking them; put your oats to soak overnight with a little starter, then cook them out and carry on as above.

If this doesn’t make sense to you, then don’t freak; go back to basics and learn to do a basic sourdough first. It’s all the rage under lockdown and even though it isn’t super easy, it is super addictive, super healthy, and super tasty. All you really need is wheat flour, water and salt. You can make your own starter, without worrying about how old it is, whether it’s any good or where it comes from. If it’s yours, it’s perfect. Just don’t forget to name it.

“Oats thrive in the cool, wet summers of northern and eastern Europe. Because of their high water absorbency and inability to form gluten, oats are generally used as a secondary bread grain, in combination with wheat and/or rye.” Ref: p30 Stanley Ginsberg (c2016) The Rye Baker; Classic Breads from Europe and America. WW Norton & Company: New York and London