Times sure are strange right now. Here in Colorado, our governor has a stay-at-home order in place during the Coronavirus pandemic. Everyone in our household is in a high-risk category, so we've been doing lots of online shopping and having things delivered or going for curbside pickup.

To make things more fun and delicious during our time at home, we decided to buy a bread machine from Amazon. We figured it would be easier to buy some flour and yeast than to constantly try to buy bread. And here in the high altitude, it's hard to get bread dough to rise properly. Having a machine do it for you takes out so many of the high-altitude and high plains desert variables. And really, who wouldn't want a bread machine even if you can make your own bread? It's like a slow cooker--you set it and forget it. We are talking convenience here, people!


And you know us ladies, we are constantly on Pinterest. On our blog, we share either our own recipes or the most pinter-worthy recipes we come across. And we found a delicious and easy bread recipe on Pinterest! You can find the original recipe on Happy Hooligan's blog, but we'll list it below too just to make it easy on you.


This recipe is for a honey-oat bread. We used a medium setting on our bread machine and got a nice and crisp crust but the inside was oh so fluffy and chewy. Yum! We made two minor changes to the recipe when making this bread. My sister is currently on a dairy-free diet because of breast feeding so we are constantly figuring out how to make things dairy-free. So for this recipe, we used a plant-based butter instead of regular butter or margarine. The other change was just because our bread flour hasn't been delivered yet, so we tried with all-purpose flour. We were in need of bread so we thought we'd just try it out and see what happened. Hopefully we have our bread flour for next time!


The recipe also calls for 7 to 9 ounces of water. Because we live in super dry Colorado, I opted for starting with 8 ounces. I only ended up adding about an additional teaspoon in later to make the dough the right consistency. I also pulsed our old fashioned oats with my immersion blender to get it more to the size of quick oats.


My mom ate her warm slice with some European butter slathered on. I opted for butter and a little honey. We bought a giant bottle of honey on Amazon, so why not, right?  It was delicious and turned out great even without the bread flour! Now what are you waiting for? Go pull out the ingredients and your bread machine!

1.5 Pound Honey-Oat Bread

Ingredients

• 7-9 ounces of warm water
• 1 ½  tablespoon honey
• 1 tablespoon softened butter, margarine or plant-based butter
• ½ cup quick cook oats
• 2 ½ cups bread flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 ¾  teaspoons active dry yeast or bread machine yeast

Directions

1. Place your ingredients into your bread machine bowl in the order listed above.
2. Ensure that your salt and yeast do not touch when placing your ingredients into the bread machine bowl. 
3. Set your bread machine to make a 1.5 pound loaf plus any other settings you need depending on your machine and then hit start.
4. Once your bread is done, take it out of your bread machine and turn the loaf onto a cooling rack. Let it cool for 20 minutes before cutting into it to allow it to set up.