Irish Oat Bread Homemade Recipe

Homemade Irish Oat Bread makes delicious, hearty bread that is perfect for toast and sandwiches. Full of Irish oats, also known as steel cut oats that add a nutty flavor and nubby texture. Our delicious whole grain bread is the perfect balance of flavors that will get your home smelling cozy and welcoming.

We are walking you through the entire process for how to prepare the steel cut oats and create a beautifully light but structured loaf. This recipe is sure to become a favorite for your family.

Cool temperatures encourage heating up the stove for homemade baked goods. Fresh Homemade French Bread and this Irish Oat bread are just a few of the warm baked goods we enjoy when the cook is in the kitchen.

What makes an Irish Oat Bread?

Traditional Irish breads are soda breads made with white or whole wheat flour. Early Irish bakers reached for baking soda rather than yeast, because Irish flour was too soft to make a good yeast bread. To make an Irish Oat Bread, you simply add steel cut oats which are hearty and strong and give the bread structure.

The Irish Oat Bread adds so much flavor it is a great loaf to use for sandwiches. The structure provides a strong base that will hold in your sandwich fixings. You can even use it for hot sandwiches like our Italian Stuffed Meatloaf Sandwich.

This homemade bread slices are large compared to store bought bread size. Half of a sandwich is often more than enough to fill you up making it a great sandwich to split over a bowl of warm soup. Whole grain breads like this one are filling and full of slow digesting fiber that will keep you satisfied and sustained.

What is the secret to making good bread?

Making good homemade bread does take practice, but it is actually a very simple process that is rewarding and inventive. Below we are sharing our advice as a general rule of thumb for successful bread making.

• Be sure to follow the directions. Bakers know their methods and will guide you along.
• Use fresh, high quality ingredients, especially your flour and yeast.
• Learn how to tell when gluten is properly developed by using the windowpane test.
• Learn how to correctly rise and form loaves. A poor rise will affect the texture and density of a loaf of bread.

Experience is the best teacher in bread baking. There are plenty of educational resources these days. YouTube, blogs like this one, and good books!

One of our blogger friends, Karen at Karen’s Kitchen Stories is a master bread baker and a great resource. If you feel like really getting into the bread baking craft she has lots of inspiration and bread baking tips.

Whole Grain Porridge Breads

This multi grain bread recipe uses steel cut oats as the whole grain. The recipe uses an all purpose bread flour and is actually a porridge bread. The whole grain is soaked and added in rather than milled through a grain mill.

Once you get used to making this oat bread you can experiment with soaking and adding in other grains with the Irish oats. You can also add nuts and seeds but don’t get too carried away. You want a good balance of texture in your bread or it will get stiff and too dry.

Irish Oat Bread Recipe Notes

This recipe comes from the book, ‘Baking Bread, Old and new Traditions by Beth Hensperger.

Beth’s book on breads are informative and in depth. She covers, equipment, ingredients, and techniques for making homemade bread. She also has a huge quantity of recipes and stunning photographs to entice you to greatness.

Today’s recipe is an adaptation of one of our favorite bread recipes in her book. This homemade Honey Oat Bread is a longtime favorite in our family which is why we are sharing it with you.

Tips for working with sticky yeast doughs

This is a nubby dough, but also soft and a bit sticky. We use coconut oil when working with my yeast breads by smearing it on the counter and hands when working with the dough. It helps release the sticky dough.

We like coconut oil better than flour to keep the dough workable because my work surface is a lot cleaner, and the bread dough does not absorb the flour and get too dry by baking time.

We also grease the rise bowl with coconut oil. It’s the slipperiest oil with no stickiness of its own to cause trouble.

Tips for making this Irish Oat Bread

• You must soften the oats before proceeding with this recipe. When properly softened; instant steel cut oats offer a pleasant, slightly textured, nutty flavor addition to your bread.
• If you are committed to butter in your baking just substitute unsalted butter one to one for the coconut oil called for in this recipe. Avocado oil is also a fine oil for this bread.
• A dough scraper set is a really nice help for bread bakers. They don’t cost much and help a great deal handling sticky bread dough in the bowl and on the work table.
• Rise the dough at 70 degrees to 90 degrees. The oven bread proofing function is great for this if you have one.

High Altitude suggestions (with a bread machine)

Our Reader, Karen, made this recipe at 6,000 feet  She messaged me through email. We had a fantastic conversation. She is a stellar cook! Here are her suggestions if you are also baking at high altitude.

“I made the bread twice. I don’t have a stand mixer. The first time I used AP flour & did the whole thing in my bread machine. Disaster! I didn’t reduce the yeast enough. it didn’t bake all the way through and completely filled my machine to the brink. Too much dough. Yuck. Bread dough all over the machine. I decided to try again. I reduced the yeast (again) and the water. I also drained residual water from the oats. Then, I used bread flour and the machine just for mixing the dough. These loaves came out well. This has good flavor. I’m keeping the recipe! I might half the recipe next time.”

Here are the changes Karen made for baking this recipe at 6035ft

• I reduced the hot water for the oats by about 2 tablespoons. After the oats softened I put them into a strainer.
• I mixed the dry ingredients together.
• I mixed the oil, buttermilk, water and honey in a measuring cup and heated it to 115 degrees F.
• I stirred the eggs into the liquids one at a time.
• I put about half of the oats into the bread maker pan and stirred the rest into the flour mixture.
• I poured the liquids over oats in the pan, then spooned in the flour mixture.
• I made a well in the flour and put in 3 1/8 tablespoon of yeast. I then set the machine to dough cycle.

“This makes a lot of dough and it was crowning even on dough cycle. I won’t even mention what it did on the full cycle. At the end of the cycle I removed the dough, punched it down and put it into 2 loaf pans. I covered them and let them rise again 30 minutes. Baked them 375° for 35 minutes, but should have baked them slightly longer. It tastes good. I am tenacious/stubborn. I had to get this worked out for my own sake. After all the recipes I looked at, yours was the one that sounded the best.”

This recipe is linked at the hearth and soul Blog Hop