Oatmeal Wheat Bread

Sliced bread for sandwiches can seriously struggle here in China. The city we now live in is better and has some decent options (loaded with high fructose corn syrup I'm sure!), but my first 3 years here, we made our own sandwich bread or we didn't have sandwiches. I've gotten back into it a little more lately, too, in an effort to be healthier. I've tried a lot of basic white and wheat bread recipes. This is one of our favorites--works great for sandwiches and toast.

Oatmeal Wheat Bread
1/4 cup warm water
1 1/2 Tbs yeast
2 Tbs flour
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 cup quick-cooking oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 1/4 cups warm water
2 1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup oil
5 cups all-purpose flour, plus some additional for kneading

In a mixing bowl, stir together first 4 ingredients. Let sit for about 5 minutes to let yeast bubble and grow (re-do it if its not bubbly after 5 minutes).

Add oats, wheat flour, warm water, salt, brown sugar, and oil.

Mix on low-speed with a hand-mixer for one to two minutes. Continue to mix while adding flour cup by cup. Stir by hand when too much for the mixer. Knead in remaining flour and any additional to make a smooth, elastic dough--8-10 minutes of kneading.

Place dough in an oiled bowl, turning to coat. Cover with damp cloth and let rest in warm place to rise until double, about 1 hour.

Punch down dough and divide into 3 pieces. Shape and place in greased 8x4 loaf pans (or you can place pieces individually in a greased zip lock bag and freeze at this point).

Let dough rise again until about 1 inch above rim of pan--about 45 minutes. Bake at 350F (180C) for 35 minutes. Let cool in pans for 10 minutes and then move to wire racks to cool completely.

Notes: If you freeze dough, when you're ready to use it, give yourself about a half day before you need it--take out of freezer and place in pan to thaw and rise, then bake according to directions. I say give yourself a half day because this will take several hours. This bread will also do fine if you bake it and throw it in the freezer until you're ready for it--cutting off the time of thawing and baking dough.

Also, if you don't have access to whole wheat flour, you could still make this bread. I would probably just sub an extra 1/2 cup of oats and 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour for the wheat flour. This will still be a relatively "smooth" bread even with the oatmeal in it.