Inspiration porridge.

So I put it in my bread machine for the next loaf.

I call this my "Lusty Bread Wench" pose.  You get it because I couldn't find the camera, so I resorted to Photo Booth.

This loaf of bread marks a sort of turning point for me.  I think I'm getting good enough at bread making — in the bread machine anyway — that I no longer have to follow a recipe exactly.  I can mess with it a little bit, and it still comes out nice.  Sometimes it comes out EXCELLENT.  And that is what happened with this bread.

Here is what I did.  I had a serving or so of cooked plain steel cut oats in the fridge left over from the previous day's breakfast.  They had been on the moist side — not nearly as "grainy" looking as the oats in Leila's post, more soupy/porridgy.     I didn't even measure them — I tossed the porridge, which had congealed to a disk the shape of the bowl, into the bottom of my bread machine pan.  

I figured it represented about three tablespoons of raw oats and about six ounces of water, some of which had been absorbed by the oats of course, and of course sometimes I add cooked grains to my bread without changing the water at all; so I used 8 ounces of water instead of 9.  I thought about leaving the egg out but decided against it; in it went.  Honey seemed like it would taste nice as a sweetener, so 2 Tbsp of that.  I used a bit less coconut oil than usual because there was some in the porridge.  3 cups whole wheat flour, a bit less than 2 Tbsp dry milk, a teaspoon and a half of salt, and a teaspoon and a half of bread machine yeast, and there it goes.

I checked it during the knead cycle, and MAN was it wet!  You could stick your finger right in it, like, well, like porridge.  I added 4 tablespoons of all-purpose flour.  I didn't know how much to add, I just tried to add flour until it looked right.  I guess I must be getting better at this…

It came out gorgeous.  Look at that crumb!  And moist.  There is just something about cooked oats that moistens baked goods of all kinds.  Fantastic.

So, now I have something to do with those leftover steel-cut oats that appear in my kitchen once or twice a week.  But more importantly, I am apparently figuring out how to change bread recipes on the fly.  And THAT is extraordinarily useful.