This morning was one of those mornings where my brain was wide awake by about 4:30. I tried to make it go back to sleep. I lay there for several hours, eyes tight shut, willing my brain to shut the hell up already, but…no such luck.

So instead I finally gave up and got out of bed and came upstairs, and started on a batch of bread. I made a batch of this Oatmeal Toasting Bread last weekend and it turned out absolutely wonderfully, so I am making it again, in the hopes that the first time was not a fluke. It is the sort of bread that holds together well enough in a slice to go into the toaster as well as in a sandwich, which is exactly what I have been trying to figure out how to do for a while now. It’s got oats and oat bran so it’s a nice, hearty bread, but it doesn’t *taste* healthy, which is one of the major flaws of most whole grain breads. I don’t mind that sort of thing for toasting, but in a sandwich I want my bread to take a back seat to whatever is inside it.

This recipe makes three loaves, which means it requires the use of my largest mixing bowl, and because it won’t fit in the bowl of my KitchenAid, it also means I have to knead it by hand. I am not normally a fan of that, since it tends to make a giant mess of flour everywhere, but this morning it was actually rather nice, to be standing there in a quiet kitchen, working dough with my bare hands.

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A belated Happy Blogiversary to me! Ten years ago, on January 15th, 2000, I wrote the very first entry in this little corner of the internet.