Oat bread - tweaking recipe help pls?

[belfie]

Ok so I've been trying to make some bread that I like. Currently I eat wheat-free bread that is "fructose friendly" (for fructose malabsorption) - I buy Oat Sour Dough at the bargain price of about $7 for a small loaf. You can imagine I'm keen to try making my own. 

So I've tried all the TMX GF breads, and to be honest, my Oat Sour Dough is just heaps nicer.  So then I looked up Oat Bread recipes and gave one a try.  It was a total mess of a process but the bread was surprisingly good!  So I'm hoping to tweak the recipe and try again, and just hoped that some bread experts out there might be able to help me!  Also, given that FMers can't have fructans in wheat (but actually we have no issue with gluten) I've actually bought some gluten flour (as in pure gluten) and was going to try adding that to help the bread also.

I'm going to list the actual recipe then what I ACTULLY did (which was quite different).
Oat Bread!
I use the dough setting on my bread machine. Put liquid ingredients in first, then wet ingredients, and yeast last.
Check dough during kneading, and add flour or water as needed.
Water 1 1/2 c.
Oil 3T
Oat flour 2 1/2C
Date sugar 1/2C
Arrowroot 1/2C
Guar gum 1T
Salt 1/2 tsp.
Active dry yeast 2 1/4 tsp.
I use the dough setting on my bread machine, then remove dough & put in bread pan, rise 30 minutes, then bake 50 minutes.

So I milled the oat flour in my TMX in batches of 150g (could I do bigger than this?), I started by 2mins per batch then started getting impatient so cut it down to 1 or 1.5 mins.  I think it needed to be 1.5mins at least otherwise there was a bit of chunkier texture in there.  (maybe would be nice for variation?). 
Then I added all my dry ingredients.  Used only 80g of arrowroot (was all I had, instead of 125g), only 80g of brown sugar (instead of 125g, cos I thought 1/2 cup of sugar looked too much plus I didn't have date sugar anyway).  Used Xantham gum instead of guar gum. 1 sachet of yeast.   It was REALLY dry.  I kneaded it in the TMX (even though I've read you shouldn't knead GF breads... so where does this sit?).  It was horrifically dry. I added an extra 300g of water.  It didn't mix. So then I blended it (breaking EVERY rule of bread-making??).  It was mostly ok. I left it to rise thinking it would undoubtedly be a disaster.  It rose a fair bit (maybe not doubled but looked ok to me). Texture still had some issues with lumpier drier bits.  Shrugged my shoulders, threw it in the oven at 220 (after looking at other recipes as this one had no temp). Sounds a bit hot in retrospect?

After 50 mins I got a surprsingly nice loaf. You could spot the lumpy bits in places and it was definitely too sweet... but even non-wheat-free DH said hey that's actually quite nice. 

So I'm thinking the recipe should be:
Mill the oats
add the dry ingredients as above + 3tbs gluten flour (~1tbs per cup of flour) and only 40g brown sugar (not sure if this is still too much?), and think it could have 1tsp salt (instead of .5 tsp)
add the wet ingredients (as original recipe but maybe 350g more water?).  Knead for 2 mins? (given I'm adding gluten would this be logical?)
Rise & bake as I did last time.

If that makes sense to anyone - well done to you. Any advice on amounts of sugar, gluten, salt, kneading, rising & baking would be greatly appreciated!

TIA
Belfie

[achookwoman]

Belfie,  I am not going to be of much help here as the only successful GF loaf that I have made is the adapted one from Dan Lephard.  (Posted)  You obviously like a heavier loaf.  It would seem that GF bread had a higher percentage of liquid than ordinary bread.  1 min. kneading might be enough with 2 rises,  (double).  I also make a Sour dough oat meal loaf and this is pretty substantial even though it has white bread flour in it.  I think you are just going to have to fiddle with the recipe until you get it exactly to your liking.  You sound like you are well on the way.

[belfie]

thanks achookwoman - this might be a dopey question, but why the two bread rises?  It seemed light enough after just 1 last time (but maybe I'm not used to really light bread hahahah). 

Also another question... where is the best place to put bread to rise? I'm quite new to bread-making and to be honest I'm never sure where to put it.  Today it's coldish & rainy and I just don't have anywhere obviously warm.  Whereas the other time I made it, it had been warm that day and I put it in the garage which had lots of lovely post-warm-day heat.  So should I heat the oven a tiny bit & put it in there? (but then I still need to pre-heat oven for baking). Or do I just stick it anywhere in the house & not worry about finding a warm spot? (I usually cover it with gladwrap and a tea-towel.)

TIA

[judydawn]

Belfie, I never have to heat the oven in summer to help the dough rise but in winter I occasionally use that method, heat the oven to 50^oC, turn it off and place the bowl in there.  At other times I just place it anywhere and everywhere I think is the warmest place.  Outside in the sun, on a window ledge which the sun is hitting, in the microwave which is warmer than the room temperature generally, in the car out in the sun, under my feather quilt in my bed with the electric blanket on if it is quite cold, I've even emptied a fresh load from the dishwasher and put the bowl in there as it retains the heat for some time. If you leave the dough in the TM bowl for the first rise, you can even wrap a towel around it to keep in the warmth that the kneading action has already generated.
Chookie will add her methods and explain the 2 rises.

[achookwoman]

Belfie,  the ideal temp to prove bread is between 20 and 25 0 C.  All of Judy's suggestions are good. You can also float the tin in a sink of hot water.
Some recipes call for just 1 rise,  but I have found the texture and a better rise occurs with 2 rises.  Some recipes,like this one for rolls ,( my Blog Dec 13 2011) puts the rolls into a cold oven after 1 rise.  The 2nd rise occurs while the oven is heating up, and the rolls bake at the higher temp.  I don't find this successful with a loaf.

Belfie,  you are asking good questions,  so are obviously making good progress.  Keep trying and you will have an excellent loaf.