Milk and oatmeal bread in ceramic cocotte

This simple and easy-to-make recipe will not leave you indifferent. This milk and oat bread is a soft and tender bread, “abrioched” by the effect of milk and flavoured by rosemary honey.

Perfect to serve sliced ​​for breakfast and accompanied by homemade jam, the aroma it leaves in the house is so wonderful that you will want to bottle it as a home fragrance. Made inside the Emile Henry ceramic cocotte , you get a crispier crust and a more tender interior.

You can mix and knead by hand if you wish, but using the Kitchen Aid (with the hook accessory that all models include) makes the process easier, since this recipe has a wet and sticky dough, which makes it somewhat difficult to do by hand.

Bérard olive wood flour spoon

Ingredients

• 200ml whole milk
• 60g of oat flakes
• 420g of strong flour
• 1 sachet of baker's yeast (7g)
• 30g butter
• 2 eggs
• Pinch of salt to taste
• 4-5 tablespoons of rosemary honey (or whatever you like best, but it must be of good quality)

KitchenAid Artisan 5KSM175 food processor , Delight Emile Henry ceramic cocotte and Pallarès carbon steel kitchen knife with boxwood handle

Preparation

1. We begin by heating the milk until it is lukewarm. We add the 5 tablespoons of honey and stir until dissolved.
2. In the bowl of our KitchenAid we pour the flour, salt, oats and mix. We put the dough hook and place it in the robot. We add the yeast and then the milk with the honey and begin to mix at medium speed.
3. Add an egg and mix well before adding the next one. Continue kneading, you will see that the dough is very moist, don't worry, keep kneading for about 5 minutes until you see that it stops sticking to the sides of the bowl.
4. Now we add the butter and if we see it necessary a little more flour (no more than 2 tablespoons) and continue kneading for 3 more minutes.
5. The dough will be moist like Brioche, but it should hold together in a sort of ball and be elastic.
6. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead gently to form a ball. Pour into the base of our Emile Henry Delight ceramic cocotte *, lightly greased with vegetable oil, and cover to rise in a dry, warm place for one and a half to two hours.
7. Once the time has passed and it has doubled in size, we turn it out onto a floured surface again, knead it to release the gas and form a ball again.
8. Leave to rise again for 1 hour. Turn out onto a floured surface again and while you are deflating, preheat the oven to 180º and place the cocotte without a lid in the oven to warm it up.
9. After a few minutes, take it out of the oven, being careful not to burn yourself, pour the batter in, cut the surface with the tip of a knife in two lines, or like me, making a square on the surface, brush the surface with a little milk and put it in the oven with the lid on the top shelf. On the bottom shelf, place a small ceramic bowl (suitable for the oven) with water to act as a source of steam and bake for approximately 25 minutes.
10. For the last 15 minutes, we will remove the lid of our cocotte and let it bake and brown on the surface. If we see that it needs a few more minutes, we will give it that.
11. When you take it out of the oven, you will know that your bread is ready if when you turn it over and touch its base, it sounds hollow.

*For this recipe I used the Delight cocotte, which works perfectly for me because of its shape and the cooking qualities of the ceramic. I have it because my stove is induction, and when I cook on the stove it is what I need. However, if I don't have this cocotte, you can follow the same recipe in a cast iron cocotte or in the round Emile Henry loaf pan .

Delight Emile Henry ceramic cocotte , Bérard olive wood flour spoon and Pallarès carbon steel kitchen knives with boxwood handles