Whole Wheat Oatmeal Bread

Warm a stand mixer bowl for 5 minutes with hot water. Then add 2 cups warm water and yeast. Stir gently. Let the yeast activate. The best way to know if your yeast is active: keep an eye on the bowl, and the yeast makes “fireworks” and comes to the top of the water.

Once active, add the olive oil, honey, salt and oatmeal. Then add 4 cups of whole wheat flour. Put the dough hook on the mixer and mix. Once all the liquid is incorporated, keep adding flour to the dough until it comes away from the sides of the bowl, and forms a ball. (You can also knead this by hand. But I am lazy. The dough hook works great!)

Take the dough and put it in a greased large bowl. Cover with a cloth towel and put in a warm dry place to rise. I put mine in the oven with the oven light on. Let rise until dough is doubled in size. (I would give it about 1 hour).

After dough has done the 1st rise, punch the dough down, take it out of the bowl, and cut in half. Roll each half and roll each half into a loaf. Put in a greased loaf pan. Put both loaves in the same oven with the light on and once again, let it rise until doubled (about 40 minutes or less). Preheat oven to 350 degrees (take the loaves out before) and bake for about 40 minutes until crust is golden brown.

Let it cool for about 15 minutes in the pans and then transfer onto drying racks. And then eat it. YUMMY!!!