Oat Soda Bread

Source: from a webclip in the top of my aggiemail inbox that led me here, and that link subsequently led me here

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour
Yield: 1 loaf

Ingredients:
2 cups rolled oats
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoon fine grain sea salt (I didn't have this, and a teaspoon seemed like a ton, so I added 1/2 teaspoon regular salt.)
1 3/4 cups buttermilk (plus more if needed), and 2 Tablespoons for brushing (You can make a perfectly good buttermilk substitute by putting 1 TB white vinegar or lemon juice in a measuring cup and bringing the volume up to 1 cup with milk. Let sit for 5 minutes and voila! You've got "buttermilk".)
mixed seeds - sesame, caraway, poppy, etc (I didn't have any seeds of any kind, so I sprinkled the top with flour instead and it turned out lovely.)

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 400°F with a rack in the middle of the oven. Butter and line a 9x5x3 inch loaf pan (or one with ~8 cup capacity) with parchment paper and set aside. Alternately, you can bake this bread without a pan, on a lightly floured baking sheet. (I did the latter ... following directions on the second website listed above: http://www.injennieskitchen.com/2011/01/oat-soda-bread.html)

To make the oat flour, use a food processor (or blender!) to pulse the rolled oats a few times. Then process into a fine powder - another minute or two. If you are buying oat flour, not making your own, measure out scant 2 cups.

Sift the flours, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl. Make a well in the flour and pour in the buttermilk. Stir just until everything comes together into a dough. Turn out onto a lightly floured countertop and knead for 30 seconds or so, just long enough for the dough to come together into a cohesive, slightly flattened ball without many cracks or fissures. If your dough is on the dry side, add more buttermilk a small splash at a time. Now ease the dough evenly into the prepared baking pan.

Brush all over the top and sides with buttermilk and sprinkle generously with mixed seeds or flour, 2 Tablespoons or so. Slice a few deep slashes across the top of the dough. Bake for about 30 minutes, then quickly (without letting all the hot air out of the oven), move the rack and the bread up a level, so the top of the bread gets nice and toasted. Bake for another 20 minutes, or until a hard crust forms and the bread is baked through. (We actually just baked it all on the same rack for ~40 minutes and it turned out perfect ... just watch it and adjust accordingly for your oven.) It will feel very solid and sound hollow when you knock on it. Carefully lift it out of the pan, in a timely fashion, and allow to cool on a wire rack. Enjoy with a good slathering of salted butter.

Notes:
I used to love to make rolls and bread on Sundays, but since I'm doing a lot of mammalian cell culture up in the lab, I've had to pretty much cut yeast out of my life. (See, if I knead bread dough that has yeast in it, some of the yeast can live on my hands - even though I wash them - which can then cause contamination - aka havoc! - in my cultures in the lab. Bad news all around.) So, when I stumbled across this recipe I knew I had to give it a try. While it doesn't taste a lot like yeast bread (go figure), I thought it was quite crusty and tasty. Gregg thought it was kind of a mix between corn bread and biscuits. We had it spread with butter and honey. I think it would be delightful dunked in soup. It's definitely easy and quick and conveniently yeast-free! (P.S. I tried to steal a photo from one of the blogs I stole the recipe from, but somehow it's not working ... just go to their sites to see the beauty of this bread.)