Molasses Bread

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Does this bread taste as good as it looks? Yes, yes it does. It’s a brown molasses bread, and it has great flavor and great texture (even though I was almost all out of wheat gluten). I would bake it a bit longer than I did, but other than that, it was great. It’s dark inside as well, and some recipes called for food coloring or coffee to darken it, and I would not try food coloring. I am a total bread girl, so I would give this an 8, and the recipe came from melskitchencafe.com.

DSC_2137

 

  • Molasses Bread
  • 2 1/2 cups warm water (about 110 degrees)
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons instant yeast
  • 1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon unsulphured molasses
  • 2 tablespoons unsweetened, natural cocoa powder
  • 3 tablespoons oil (see note above) I used olive
  • 1/3 cup honey I left this out
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 3 tablespoons vital wheat gluten (optional - see note) I only had about 1/2 tsp. left
  • 3 cups white whole wheat flour I increased this to 4 cups
  • 3-4 cups all-purpose flour This was closer to 3 cups
  • 2-3 tablespoons butter, melted I just brushed butter on top
  • Old-fashioned oats for sprinkling

Recipe and instructions can be found at link below:

https://www.melskitchencafe.com/sweet-molasses-bread/

 

Essentially, I made a soaker the night before with 1 cup of wheat flour and 3/4 cup water. I just adjusted the amounts as necessary to make it all match up when I put it in the mixer. So essentially, you add everything but a few cups of flour (and the butter and oats) and mix it. You slowly add in flour until it cleans the side of the bowl, but there was still some sticky residue on the side. The dough itself stuck to my fingers, but not massively. Then, I let it rise in a greased bowl for about 65 minutes, until it had doubled in size. Then I shaped it into 3 tight loaves and it rose for about 35 minutes until I preheated the oven (it was 45 minutes from shaping to going into the oven). I put 3 on a lined jelly roll pan, but two were diagonal next to each other and the last one was on the side, and I scored it 3 times across the loaf before I put it in. I baked this at 375 for 25 minutes, and then I took it out, brushed it with butter, added the oats, and then put it back in for another 5 minutes. You could probably go for another 7 minutes instead of just 5.

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