A few weeks ago I made Granola Bread. I'd wanted to try it for a little while. The benefit of making it now was that I could use up my very toasty granola, and make more! Also, I was hopeful that something as wholesome as bread would be eaten by my coworkers, even if they might be giving up things for Lent.
I decided to make half of the recipe, mostly because I only had enough granola left for a single loaf. I also like making single loaves of bread, and therefore making half batches of some recipes, because that way I don't have to try dividing the dough exactly in half.
This bread took regular and white whole wheat flour, oat flour (I ground some oat bran I had), powdered milk (affiliate link), and potato, in addition to the usual salt, yeast, and water. You mix those ingredients together in a stand mixer for quite a while (up to 20 minutes to get the proper gluten development) before adding granola. I actually mixed this for longer than 20 minutes because I couldn't get it to windowpane at all, and wasn't sure that it was ready. It became very sticky once I added the granola, and really thickened up, so maybe it was ready after all.
I put it in a greased tupperware and let it rest for between 90 minutes and 2 hours, folding it a few times. Again, this was a very thick dough. I formed it into a rough ball, let it rest another 30 minutes, and then formed it into a torpedo-shape. I let it rise another hour, but it didn't really rise as much as I would have hoped, even though I had the oven running. I baked it for 13 minutes under a pot to capture steam, and another 15 minutes uncovered.
Let me preface this by saying that the bread didn't rise like I thought it should. I think my kitchen is still too cold during the winter, and I should have created a warmer space for it to rise. I was impatient. You can tell from the picture that it was really the tiniest loaf ever - more like the size of melba toasts. The taste was good. It tasted very healthy - as you'd expect from whole wheat flour and oats. I would have liked it more if I'd gotten it to rise more, since I don't like my bread to have as dense a texture as this had. This bread would have been pretty good with cream cheese or butter (which I don't eat), or toasted with some honey. I wasn't happy with the way my loaf turned out, but I'll give it another shot in the future.
Babygirl says
You know, I've never heard of a granola loaf before but this really looks scrumptious and unique. Very nice post.