Seven Grain and Brown Sugar Bread - Recipe

My experiments with hot cereal for breakfast were unfruitful. Yep, I still don't like squishy soggy grains for breakfast.  Luckily I know what to do with leftover hot cereal: make bread. I improvised this recipe from the recipe Oatmeal Molasses Bread from Earth to Table. It turned out delicious.

Jeff asked me why I didn't put the seven grain cereal on top instead of the oatmeal. Well, the oatmeal is prettier, don't you think? The results are a soft and sweet loaf of bread that needs just a little butter smeared on top. This recipe will work for any leftover hot cereal. It doesn't have to be leftover either, you can make fresh hot cereal if you like. 

Seven Grain and Brown Sugar Bread

1 cup cooked hot cereal (I used Bob's Redmill Seven Grain Cereal)

2/3 cup hot liquid (could be water, could be milk, could be coffee)

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons butter, melted

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg

2 1/2 teaspoons yeast

3-4 cups unbleached flour

Step 1: Mix the hot cereal with your hot liquid and brown sugar. Stir in the melted butter, egg and salt. Then sprinkle the yeast over that and mix it in.

Step 2: Slowly stir in the additional flour. When the dough becomes very hard to stir, turn it out on the table and kneed in the rest of flour until you have a nice elastic dough. Take a good 10 minutes to get the bread well kneaded. The dough should still be slightly sticky after kneeding.

Step 3: Form the dough into a ball and cover it lightly with oil. Place it in a bowl and cover with a tea towel and let rise in a still oven until double in size (about 1 to 1.5 hours). Punch down the dough and turn it out on a floured surface. Divide it into three equal balls. Roll a ball out into a rectangle about 12x9. Starting at the narrow end, roll up the dough into a cylinder and pinch along the bottom to smooth and seal. Repeat with the other two dough balls. Place the cylinders of dough on a greased cookie sheet. Sprinkle oats or the dry seven grain cereal over the top of the dough and press it in. Allow the dough to rise for another 40 minutes.

Step 4: Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Bake the loaves until they are golden brown, about 30 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. Try to wait at least five minutes before you slice and serve warm with butter.

This bread is a little too soft for sandwich bread, but honestly it never lasts long enough for me to wonder what to do with it. We just keep slicing and eating it until all three little loafs are gone.

This post was submited to wildyeast.com.