I have an old James Beard bread recipe that calls for two cups of cooked oatmeal. It occurred to me that I could up the protein considerably by substituting a cup of cooked quinoa for half of the oatmeal. And Quinoa Oatmeal Bread was born.

I’m not going to pretend that this is an easy recipe. It’s a sticky dough to work with. I used the dough hook on my Kitchen Aid for much of the kneading, and only pulled it out for the last couple of minutes to finish the kneading and form the dough into a ball.

The end product was worth the trouble. The flavor is mild, but good. It has a nice crumb and makes chewy, crispy, all-together great toast. I would make it again.

You’ll need:

1 C cooked oatmeal
1 C cooked quinoa
2 packages (or 2 TBS) active dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
1/2 C warm water
1 C warm milk ( I used 1%)
1 TBS salt
1/4 C brown sugar
1-2 TBS molasses
5 C all-purpose or bread flour ( approximate measure )

Method:

1. Cook the oatmeal and quinoa according to package directions. Just make extra on a day you’re having oatmeal for breakfast and planning to make a quinoa salad.
2. Proof the yeast in the warm water sprinkled with the teaspoon of sugar.
3. Put the oatmeal and quinoa into a large bowl, or the bowl of your mixer if  you plan to use a dough hook for kneading. If they’re hot, let them cool to lukewarm before you add the rest of the ingredients.
4. Add the warm milk, salt, brown sugar, molasses and proofed yeast to the oatmeal and quinoa. Stir well.
5. Add the flour, one cup at a time, until you have a reasonably workable dough.
6. At this point, either turn the dough out onto a floured board or start kneading with the dough hook in your mixer. Either way, you’ll find that more flour will be required to get the dough into usable form. Add just a little at a time until things feel right. “Right” means not a sticky mess. Just kind of soft and able to be formed.
7. Form the dough into a ball and put it into a greased bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a draft-free spot until doubled. This should take 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
8. After the dough has risen, punch it down and form it into two loaves that will fit into two greased 8×4 inch loaf pans.
9. Cover the pans lightly with plastic wrap and let the dough rise until it domes slightly above the rim. Around 45 minutes.
10. Bake in a pre-heated 375 oven for approximately 45 minutes. At this point, take the loaves out of the pans and put them back in the oven for another 3 or 4 minutes to crisp the crusts a bit more.