A lovely, moist honey oat bread, with rolled oats, honey and bit of whole wheat flour, as well. This bread staysfresh for days and makes a great sandwich bread!
When it comes to bread, I love a loaf that delivers some whole grain goodness, but that also maintains a lovely soft crumb, like my Seeded Multigrain Sandwich Bread. This Honey Oat Bread also falls into that camp, with a good bit of rolled oats and a touch of whole wheat flour added into the mix.
I love this loaf for its great flavour from the oats and honey, its tender, moist crumb and its rustic, oat-rolled appearance. This oat bread keeps well, slices beautifully and makes the most fabulous sandwiches!
Ingredients and Substitutions
Here are the simple ingredients you will need for this bread …
- Rolled oats – the large-flake, old-fashioned rolled oats are best, though quick oats will work here as well.
- Whole wheat flour – regular whole wheat or white whole wheat are both fine
- All-purpose flour – unbleached recommended, but regular bleached is fine
- Honey – or alternately maple syrup or brown sugar
- Boiling water, salt and butter (or oil)
Step by Step Photos
- Step 1: Soak the oats in boiling water with the butter and salt, for 20-25 minutes.
- Step 2: Check the temperature of the mixture. Make sure it’s cooled to lukewarm, about 110F. If it’s too hot when you add your yeast, it will kill the yeast.
- Step 3: Add the proofed yeast mixture.
- Step 4: Add the whole wheat flour.
- Step 5: Add the honey.
- Step 6: Add the first cup of all purpose flour
- Step 7: Add another 1 – 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour until you have a moist dough that wraps around the hook and cleans the bowl a little.
- Step 8: Remove the dough to a floured surface and knead, adding just as much flour as need to prevent the dough from sticking.
- Step 9: Form dough into a ball.
- Step 10: Place dough into a greased bowl or measuring cup. Cover with plastic wrap.
- Step 11: Let dough rise until doubled.
- Step 12: Remove dough to a floured surface and gently deflate.
- Step 13: Form dough into a rough oval, about as long as the loaf pan.
- Step 14: Flip the dough over and pinch the sides into the centre, down the length of the loaf, pinching the ends in as well.
- Step 15: Flip back over right side up. Scatter some rolled oats on your work surface.
- Step 16: Lightly brush your loaf with water, then roll over the oats, coating top, sides and bottom of the loaf.
- Step 17: Place loaf into a greased 8×4-inch loaf pan. Cover with a greased piece of plastic wrap.
- Step 18: Let loaf rise until doubled. Remove plastic wrap and bake.
Recipe Tips
If you are new to bread making, I highly encourage you to check out my Getting Started With Yeast Bread Baking resource page, to get a good understanding of the process of making homemade bread.
This loaf will need a solid 45 minutes in the oven or until it reach at least 200F internal temperature when tested with an instant read thermometer. Be sure you are inserting the thermometer in the dead centre of the loaf for the most accurate reading. It shouldn’t have over-browned in that time, but check your loaf at about 35-40 minutes and if it seems in danger of over-browning, lay a sheet of aluminum foil loosely over-top for the last part of baking.
Top Tip
The addition of soaked oatmeal to this bread produces a lovely, moist loaf, but it also means the loaf will need longer in the oven to bake off some of that moisture. This loaf will need at least 45 minutes in the oven, which is quite a bit longer than most bread loaves. A thermometer is best for testing done-ness, but if you don’t have a thermometer, err on the side of leaving it in the oven a few minutes longer, rather than rushing it out, to ensure you don’t end up with a loaf with an under-done middle.
Storing and Freezing
This bread will keep well, well-wrapped on the counter for several days. This bread will also freeze beautifully up to 3 months.
Get the Recipe: Honey Oat Bread
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cups (285 ml) boiling water
- 3/4 cup large-flake, old-fashioned rolled oats, plus more for coating
- 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
- 2 Tablespoons (28 g) butter, or vegetable oil
- 1/3 cup (75 ml) honey, any mild-flavoured runny honey
- 1/4 cup (55 ml) lukewarm water, about 105F.
- 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry or instant yeast
- 1/2 cup (60 g) whole wheat flour, (or more all purpose flour)
- 2 1/2 - 3 cups (300-360 g) all purpose flour, approximately
Instructions
- Boil some water and measure out 1 1/4 cups. Add to a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer. Add the rolled oats, salt and butter and stir to combine. Let stand 20 minutes, to soak and cool. *Be sure your mixture has cooled enough before you add your yeast to the bowl. If it's too hot, you will kill your yeast. Use a thermometer to test the temperature. It should be around 105F to 110F before you add the yeast. If you don't have a thermometer, let cool 5 minutes more and make sure it's just lukewarm.
- Add the yeast to the lukewarm water. Stir and let stand 5 minutes.
- Once the oat mixture is cooled enough, add the honey, proofed yeast mixture, whole wheat flour and the 1st cup of all purpose flour to the bowl. Mix to combine with the kneading hook. With the mixer running, begin adding the 2nd cup of flour in small increments, letting it mix in before adding more. Continue adding this cup and additional flour, if needed, until you have a quite moist dough, but one that wraps around the hook and cleans the bowl in spots. It may still have a sticky bit at the bottom of the bowl. That is ok. Remove the dough to a floured surface and knead a few minutes, adding a bit more flour, only as needed, to prevent it from sticking to your hands or the work surface. Form into a ball. Place into a greased bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.
- Grease an 8x4-inch loaf pan and set aside.
- Remove dough to a lightly floured surface and gently deflate it by pressing down on it with your palms. Form the dough into a rough oval, about as long as your loaf pan (set your loaf pan next to your work area to judge the length). Flip the dough over and pinch in from the sides to the centre of the dough, pinching a seam down the middle. Pinch in the ends, as well. Flip it back over, right side up. Scatter some rolled oats on your work surface. Lightly brush your dough with water (not too much - just a light coating), then roll it over the oats, rolling to cover top, sides and bottom. Place dough into your prepared loaf pan. Spray a piece of plastic wrap with cooking spray and cover the top of the pan tightly. Allow to rise until doubled again, about 45-60 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 350F. (regular bake setting/not fan assisted)
- When dough is ready, remove plastic wrap and bake in preheated oven for about 45 minutes, or until the loaf tests at least 200F with an instant read thermometer. If you don't have a thermometer, insert a tester in the side and into the centre. It should come out clean and dry. If in doubt, leave it in the oven a few extra minutes, as you probably won't hurt it. *It is unlikely that your loaf will over-brown, but check it after about 35 minutes and if it looks like it may over-brown, lay a sheet of aluminum foil loosely over-top for the last part of baking.
- Remove loaf from oven and immediately remove from pan to a cooling rack to cool completely before slicing.
Notes
More Oat Bread Recipes to Love!
Hi! I’m Jennifer, a home cook schooled by trial and error and almost 40 years of getting dinner on the table! I love to share my favourite recipes, both old and new, together with lots of tips and tricks to hopefully help make your home cooking enjoyable, stress free, rewarding and of course, delicious!
I have made this recipe several times now. I love the flavor but often have issues with it deflating. I follow the instructions and I’m using active dry yeast.
I’m end up with a much larger amount of dough than I see in the pictures and the first time I put it all in one loaf pan it crawled over the sides. I generally am successful making bread, this one is leaving me a bit stumped as to what my problem(s) May be.
Hi Jessica and I suspect I know what your problem is :) I’m pretty sure you are adding too much flour to the dough. It is easily done, especially when you are used to a regular dough coming together nicely in the bowl. When you add lots of oatmeal to the mix though, it becomes a really moist dough and you can keep throwing flour in the bowl, trying to get it to become smooth and it never will. You have to take a little leap of faith with these moist doughs and stop adding flour at or very close to the 3 cups of flour. Turn it out onto a floured work surface and start kneading, adding just as much flour as needed to keep it from sticking to your hands or the work surface. You will find that the dough that looked too moist in the bowl, actually becomes very kneadable with just a little bit more flour on the work surface. It will still feel moist. But not sticky.
After that, set to rise and make sure you allow it to rise only until doubled. I like to use a glass measuring cup so I can measure the rise. Moist doughs like this one can be very quick risers, so it is easy to over-proof them. Watch them closely and stop the rise as soon as the dough has doubled, both the 1st rise and in the pan. Over-proofing is a common cause of dough deflating. So, I think you may be both adding too much flour (you have too much dough – too large for the pan) and possibly over-proofing. Again, this is easily done when working with this kind of moist dough.
Hope that helps and you will try this one again. It really is a lovely loaf :) Let me know how you make out!
Thank you. Trying again today. I do stop at 3 cups of flour. I think it may be the over proofing. Instead of doing a full hour I’m setting the timer for 40 min and I’ll check it. I used a smaller bowl this time too.
It is fun to figure out the right formula
Could you use gluten free flour?
Hi Donna, I wish I could say yes, but unfortunately bread is all about the gluten, so if you want to make bread without the gluten in the flour, you have to add other things that act/behave like gluten in baking. I can’t offer any advice on that, since I don’t bake gluten free, but you should be able to find dedicated gluten free bread recipes that can offer some guidance. Once you have a bit of experience with that, you may be able to circle back to this one and adapt it as gluten free.
This delicious sandwich bread is well deserving of the many accolades in the reviews. It’s effortless to make, bakes up into a very tall beautiful loaf, is incredibly soft and moist, and tastes great. I mixed and kneaded the dough by hand, adding orange zest and a few cracks of black pepper. The dough was slack and a bit sticky to handle, so instead of rolling in oats I brushed the top of the proofed loaf with an egg wash and sprinkled it with oats. It had great oven spring and was done in 40 minutes (203°).
So glad you enjoyed it, Sadie :) It’s one of my favourites. Thanks so much!
Delicious! Probably the softest sandwich bread I’ve ever made and the flavor is wonderful. Thank you!
So glad to hear, Ali :) Thanks so much!
This was delicious! It is a large loaf and wonderfully moist. I also made it substituting maple syrup for the honey and it was delish!! Highly recommend.
So glad you are enjoying it, Joanne :) I love the sound of maple syrup. I’m going to try that next time. Thanks!
I just made this yesterday. Great recipe! I did not change any of the ingredients. I did make one change in the directions. I replaced step 3 by using my bread machine with the ‘dough’ option, i.e., I followed steps 1 & 2, then threw everything in the bread machine, selected ‘dough’ and turned it off after 60 minutes (my dough cycle runs for 90 minutes, but I normally turn it off after 30 to 60 minutes…). I then continued with the rest of the steps. YUMMY! Thx for sharing.
DeeDee :)
So glad to hear, DeeDee and good to know it works as well in the bread machine :) Thanks!
Excellent recipe! I’m asked for this recipe all the time.
So glad to hear, Brenda :) Thanks so much!
I’ve tried numerous oatmeal bread recipes attempting to recreate a bread I experienced 20 years ago. And I think this one nails it (I did double the salt for my tastebuds but probably unnecessary for most). Thanks for helping to teleport back to the Northwoods of MN!!!!! :)
So glad to hear :) Thanks so much!
This bread is absolutely delicious and I will definitely be making it again. I’m new to bread making, so I don’t have a stand mixer or a bread pan but it still came out well! I lined a brownie tin with foil and made a foil partition to help it keep its shape. It came out bigger than 8×4, but the foil partition only bowed out a little bit.
So glad to hear, Cait :) Thanks so much!
Hi Jennifer! This is our favourite bread recipe!! We would like to triple it. Do we triple the yeast?
Also, the recipe doesn’t indicate adding sugar to activate the yeast. Just wondering if this is an oversight?
Thanks so much! Keep the excellent recipes coming!!
Hi Linda and so glad you are enjoying it! So, about tripling. Are you using a stand mixer? If so, tripling would probably put a lot of strain on your mixer. I generally stick to doubling, for that reason. If doing by hand, tripling is still a lot of dough to work with, but yes, you would triple the yeast, as well. For larger batch, I generally do 2 double batches, staggering the start by a couple of hours, so they are in different stages, then I just move them along during the day. By the end, I have 4 loaves done.
This was absolutely delicious! I substituted the wwf with spelt (as I had none). As well, I accidentally over-proofed it! I hadn’t realized how well this dough rises. On the second rise I won’t proof it as long :) I did find it baked longer (just over 60 minutes) but that could be because of the spelt and material of my bread pan. Thank you so much for the sharing.
So glad you enjoyed it, Nannette :) Thanks so much!
Thanks Jennifer, made this with double the quantity. This was my first Oatmeal bread that rose so well, but keeping it for 45 minutes in the oven was a bit too much. The bottom and the top were overdone, next time will keep it for lesser time. But the Insides of the bread baked perfectly. I followed your recipe to the tee with one additional add on i.e. the juice of one lemon. I feel it helps keep my bread from spoiling for a longer period outside, as I live in a humid area.
So glad you enjoyed it, MaryAnn! Thanks so much :)
Do you think you could make this bread without a loaf pan, like a free form loaf
Hi Nancy, I’m not sure this is the best candidate for a free-form loaf, as it is a very moist dough. I fear it might just spread out as it rises and bakes, into a rather flat loaf. If you’re ok with that, you could give it a try. Another option might be to use something that constrains the spread a bit, such as a cast-iron skillet or even a round cake pan. Just a thought. If you try it, let me know how it worked out :)
Is the nutritional information based on one or two slices? My granddaughter is diabetic and I need the precise carb amount!
Hi Sabrina, the nutritional information should not be relied on to make health decisions, as a “slice” is an imprecise measure. I suggest making your own calculations based on how many slices you take from your loaf.
Hi Jennifer,
I can’t wait to try that bread recipe. Can I use whole wheat flour only?
Thanks
Hi Raymonde and no, you can’t use all whole wheat in this recipe, as it will not only create a dense loaf, but it will need a different liquid amount as it absorbs liquid differently. You could replace about 1/4 of the all purpose flour with whole wheat flour without too much issue. You may need to use a bit less flour over-all with the added whole wheat.
Hi Jennifer,
This is my second favorite after your maple sandwich bread! It was very moist and makes a lovely taste on toast. Thank you!
Thanks so much, Annie. So glad you are enjoying it. It’s one of my favourites, too :)
Hi Jennifer! Seeking help. The bread is awesome – moist and wonderful to taste .BUT the bottom of the loaf is bit more ‘dense’ vs the top part which is more like the store brought bread. What did I do wrong ?
Hi Sonali, It’s often hard to diagnose, but my gut says maybe it is over-proofed, causing the bottom to collapse under the weight of the top. Is that possible? How long are you leaving it for the second rise?
Hi Jennifer, Do you think I could do the first rise in the fridge overnight?
Hi Jan, I seldom do overnight rises (unless the recipe specifically calls for it), so I don’t have a lot of experience on that front. Generally speaking, it’s ok. I worry a bit about this one as it’s a super-fast riser, so I worry that even in the fridge, it might over-rise. That’s the only caution I’d have.
We do not need to put sugar with the yeast water mixture?
Not really. It’s not necessary at all if using Instant Yeast. If using Active Dry Yeast, you can add a tsp of sugar if you like, but modern Active Dry yeast does not “need” it.
Thank you for sharing such a moist and beautifully textured bread for making sandwiches. The one thing which I did differently was to use a moist towel instead of plastic wrap when waiting for my dough to rise. It worked well and the reason for this swap is to be more earth friendly.
So glad you enjoyed it, Bela. Thanks so much!
Can I use instant rapid yeast?
Hi Madeleine, Generally speaking, rapid-rise yeast is intended for single-rise bread. As this is a double rise bread it may not work. It may, I just can’t say for sure, as it is not a yeast that I use.
I made this bread today. Perfect! Thank you for the recipe
So glad you enjoyed it, Molly :) Thanks so much!
This does look like perfect sandwich bread. I’m dreaming of an egg salad sandwich on it!
Thank Chris and yes, egg salad is always a good idea :)
I’ve finally started baking bread, so I’ll need to add this one to the list. The addition of oats sounds extra wholesome, and from your photos, the bread looks soft and fluffy! Stay well Jennifer.
Thanks Leanne and yes, this is lovely and soft bread, for sure :)
Perfect for sandwiches or alongside that bean soup Jennifer! You always inspire me when it comes to bread baking!
Thanks Mary Ann and yes, perfect with the soup :)
Lovely loaf Jennifer! I tried an oatmeal bread recipe recently but was’t thrilled. I’m going to make yours next :) It looks perfect. Thanks so much for sharing.
Thanks so much, Tricia :) This is one of my favourite loaves for eating out of hand or sandwiches. It does make nice toast, as well, but as it’s a very moist loaf, it doesn’t get super crispy in the toaster.