This Oatmeal Molasses bread is as healthy as it is delicious. With just one tablespoon of added fat, lots of oatmeal and vitamin B rich molasses, this bread is soft, fluffy and a favorite when I make it for friends and family. Not to mention, molasses bread makes the best BLT Sandwich you’ll ever taste.
About This Recipe and Why It Works
Have you ever considered turning the Winter months into a food goal project? I suppose you could call it a New Year’s Resolution. Pick something that you’d like to master. Strengthen your kitchen skills.
January and February would be a perfect time to learn on a new culinary skill. Declare war on your nemesis food.
Decide on your task…make it once a week until you master the dish.
Me? I’m working on bread.
One of the unexpected benefits that resulted from my time in Culinary School was learning that I actually loved making bread.
I’ve been making bread as much as I can. I’ve become familiar with how the dough should feel and behave during each step of the the process.
And watching the dough come to life as it rises is truly rewarding. Homemade bread makes a mockery of the mass produced bread we buy on our supermarket bread aisle.
My favorite bread to make is this Oatmeal Molasses Bread. The aroma as it bakes is simply intoxicating. Not to mention the flavor and texture is out of this world.
Molasses bread is a wonderful dark, crusty fragrant bread, a recipe made famous from the bed and breakfast, Rabbit Hill Inn, in Lower Waterford, Vermont.
I found this Molasses bread recipe hiding inside one of my favorite bed and breakfast cookbooks, Dairy Hollow House.
This cookbook contains some of the best soup recipes you will ever slurp, and where there’ s good soup, there’s good bread. And if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times, bed and breakfast recipes are some of the best comfort food recipes you’ll find.
Molasses bread is great for a breakfast toast served with eggs. Wonderful with an apple butter or jelly. Nice for lunch with a slice of Swiss cheese melted over it. And as a base for egg salad sandwich. And possibly the best bread to make a BLT sandwich – the best you’ll eat in your entire life.
Let’s take a look.
Ingredients You’ll Need
- All Purpose Flour: No need for anything special for this molasses bread recipe. You most certainly can use bread flour, but all-purpose flour works fine.
- Quick Cooking Oats: Instant oats are called for in this recipe as they are soaked prior to folding into the dough. They’ll absorb the liquid faster and better and will be a softer option than steel cut oats, which always require a longer cooking time.
- Dry Active Yeast: As opposed to quick rising yeast.
- Black Strap Molasses: You’ll find black strap molasses in the baking department. It’s processed differently than regular molasses. It’s more dense, thicker and a carries a somewhat bitter flavor.
How To Make Oatmeal Molasses Bread
- Step 1. In a Kitchen-aid Mixing bowl, pour the boiling water over the oatmeal and butter. Let stand 30 minutes.
- Step 2: In a small bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the lukewarm water and let stand to dissolve. 5 – 10 minutes.
- Step 3. Add the yeast, molasses and salt to the oatmeal mixture and stir well.
- Step 4. Using your Kitchen-aid paddle attachment, on low, stir in enough of the flour to make a kneadable dough 1 cup at a time, so that is still somewhat sticky to the touch. Switching to the dough hook, knead until smooth and elastic on power 4. About 7 minutes. Keep adding pinches of flour until the bread just starts to clean the side of the bowl. For me, I usually end up adding about 6 – 8 pinches. The dough will still be sticky.
- Step 5. Transfer dough to a large oiled bowl. Turn dough to coat and cover with a clean cloth.
- Step 6. Let rise until doubled. About 1 ½ hours.
- Step 7. Punch the dough down and divide it in half. Note: Use a bench knife to divide the dough. It works like a charm.
- Step 8. Oil two 9 x 5 inch loaf pans. Shape the dough into loaves and place them in the prepared pans. Cover and let rise until doubled in bulk. About 40 minutes.
- Step 9. Bake the bread until crusty, about 30 minutes. Turn the loaves out of the pans onto a wire rack. Let cool.
Expert Tips and FAQ’s
The role black strap molasses plays is important here, making the bread almost as dark as pumpernickel and with a flavor all its own. Molasses is a key flavoring in many New England breads, such as Boston Brown Bread. A sweetening far more dimensional than plain old sugar or even honey. Sweetness with pleasantly subtle sour bitter under note of flavor.
The original recipe calls for Blackstrap molasses, which will give the bread a potent bittersweet flavor. I’ve used regular molasses, which will give the bread a milder flavor.
To substitute instant yeast (or rapid rise yeast) use about 25% less. This recipe calls for 1 Tablespoon of Dry Active Yeast. 1 Tablespoon weighs .5 ounces, so use 0.125 ounces of instant yeast. A kitchen scale is an excellent tool to measure this. You will also not need to prove instant yeast. Just mix it in with the water and continue with recipe.
The water should be between 100 – 110 degrees. Use a thermometer to determine if the water is the right temperature. If the water is too hot, such as 120 degrees, it will damage or kill the yeast.
Pro-Tip About Punching Down Dough: Punching down dough is a common technique in bread making. It deflates the dough and releases air so that you can form it into other shapes. Make a fist with your hand and push it firmly into the center of the puffy dough. Fold the edges into the center to make a rough ball. Then proceed with recipe instructions.
More Tips for Success
- Want more of a Steakhouse feel with the recipe? Simply divide the dough into 6-8 mini loaves and reduce baking time to about 10 minutes. Watch them close to make sure you don’t over-cook.
- Leave bread to rise in a warm spot. Cold places in your house will compromise the rising process. And could even stop it completely. You can even warm your oven to 200 degrees and then turn the oven off. Wait a few minutes and then place the dough in to rise.
Recipe for Sweet Oatmeal Bread with Molasses
I’m hoping you’ll give this luscious molasses bread recipe a try. It’s a rewarding project that your family will flip over.
And if you’re looking for more bread recipes, don’t miss my bread category. You’ll find lots of fun recipes including one of the most popular on my site for good old fashioned Banana Nut Bread.
More Homemade Bread Recipes
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Oatmeal Molasses Bread Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 cups boiling water
- 1 cup quick-cooking oatmeal
- 1 ½ tablespoons butter
- 1 tablespoon active dry yeast
- ½ cup warm water 110 degrees
- ½ cup molasses blackstrap preferably
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 4 ½ – 5 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
Instructions
- In a Kitchen-aid Mixing bowl, pour the boiling water over the oatmeal and butter. Let stand 30 minutes.
- In a small bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the lukewarm water and let stand to dissolve. 5 – 10 minutes. Add the yeast, molasses and salt to the oatmeal mixture and stir well.
- Using your Kitchen-aid paddle attachment, on low, stir in enough of the flour to make a kneadable dough 1 cup at a time, so that is still somewhat sticky to the touch.
- Switching to the dough hook, knead until smooth and elastic on power 4. About 7 minutes. Keep adding pinches of flour until the bread just starts to clean the side of the bowl. For me, I usually end up adding about 6 – 8 pinches. The dough will still be sticky.
- Transfer dough to a large oiled bowl. Turn dough to coat and cover with a clean cloth and let rise until doubled. About 1 ½ hours.
- Oil two 9 x 5 inch loaf pans. Punch the dough down and divide it in half. Shape the dough into loaves and place them in the prepared pans. Cover and let rise until doubled in bulk. About 40 minutes.
- About 30 minutes into the final rise, preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Bake the bread until crusty, about 30 minutes or until an instant read thermometer inserted into the center of each loaf reads 190 degrees. Turn the loaves out of the pans onto a wire rack. Let cool.
Notes
Nutrition
Oatmeal Molasses Bread … It’s what’s for dinner.
Why Trust My Recipes? I am a Culinary School Graduate and a lifelong student of home cooking. I hope to inspire you try to cook as often as you can. I’ve been cooking for 50 years, and my recipes are tried and true tested and tested and then tested again before published. To read more take a look at my About Page.
I don’t usually comment on recipes, but honestly this was amazing. Made it exactly as stated in the recipe and it came out beautifully. I will never buy brown bread again. Thank you for posting this.