Directions

This bread seems overwhelming to make when you read through the recipe, but I promise you it’s not. It only requires advance planning because of the waiting times. The easiest way to make it is to start the night before you intend to fire up the oven and bake it: you only need 10 minutes to make the oat soaker, the autolyse and to feed your sourdough starter… after that you can forget about it until the morning!
1. Make the oat soaker: mix the porridge oats with the tepid water in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for at least 12 hours.
2. Make the autolyse: mix the flours with the tepid water in a large bowl until you’ve got a lumpy dough. Cover with cling film and leave to autolyse for the same amount of time: 12 hours or so.
3. Feed your sourdough starter, making sure it is active and ready to use once the oat soaker and the autolyse are ready.
4. The following day, add the oat soaker, the sourdough starter and the salt (don’t forget the salt!) to the big bowl with the autolyse ingredients.
5. Mix everything together roughly with a spoon at first. Then knead the dough lightly with your hands, mainly to make sure that the oats are evenly distributed. It is a fairly wet dough so there is no need to take it out of the bowl, just stretch it with your hand, fold it over and turn the bowl a quarter of the way before repeating 5-6 times.
6. Cover the bowl once more with the cling film (reuse!) and let it prove somewhere warm for approximately 4 to 5 hours. If you can, give it a stretch and fold every now and again during this time to strengthen the dough.
7. Prepare a 2lb/900g loaf tin by lining it with baking paper and dusting it with a handful of flour and jumbo oats so that the loaf it doesn’t stick (added bonus: the jumbo oats sticking under and to the sides of the loaf look really cool!).
8. Flip the dough into the prepared tin, sprinkle a handful of jumbo oats on top of the loaf and cover it once more with the cling film, or place it inside a plastic bag, and leave to prove for another 2-3 hours.
9. At least 40 minutes before baking, preheat your oven to 250°C (480° F) / 230°C (450° F) fan / Gas 9.
10. Place the tin in the middle of the oven and create steam by half filling an oven tray with water and placing it on the oven floor.
11. Bake for 30 minutes.
12. From this point onwards you need to regularly check the bread. It still needs to bake for approximately another 30 minutes, but at some point you may need to cover it with foil so that it doesn’t go too brown and crusty or burn on top whilst the inside remains undercooked. It really depends on your oven.
13. You can also remove it from the tin and bake it directly on the oven rack for the last 10 minutes. Again, it depends on how evenly your tin and oven spread the heat. You may have to slightly have to lower the oven temperature: what you’re looking for is a deep brown crusty top, lighter brown sides and the inside must be moist but not wet.
14. Remove from the oven. Place on a cooling rack. Wait at least 30 minutes before slicing.