Eggless Oat Wheat Strawberry Loaf

I love the idea of baking bread at home and have baked a few times, though not as often as I'd like to. My friend would, co-incidentally, always come over the day I had baked bread and she thought I did this on a daily basis !
Ever since she had this multigrain bread at my place, she's been insisting that I show her how to bake bread with yeast, since she was nervous to do it on her own.

Our bread baking plans went kaput a few times and then finally last week, we actually got down to it. While the dough was rising beautifully, we decided not to waste time and baked a strawberry loaf meanwhile !



I checked for a few recipes and then zeroed in on this one from Priya's blog It turned out really soft and had a wonderful flavour of the strawberries

We did bake the bread too, a garlic and herb focaccia, which was really good. We gobbled it down before I could get down to taking any pictures !

I made this strawberry loaf again when a friend from Delhi was visiting, and this time I used oats and wheat flour. It wasn't as soft as the one with APF, but it wasn't dense either. It tasted really nice with the strawberry puree and the little bits of strawberry in the loaf, that burst with flavour...

What you need -

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup oat meal (quick cooking oats powdered in the blender)
(Or use 1.5 cups whole wheat flour and 1.5 cups APF/maida)
1 cup granulated sugar
a pinch of salt
1/2 cup oil (I used safflower)
3 tbsp plain yoghurt
10-12 strawberries
1 ripe banana
1 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp vinegar


What you do with it -

Remove stalks and wash the strawberries. Cut 4-5 strawberries into small pieces and keep aside
Purée the remaining strawberries with the banana and half cup sugar
In a bowl, add the wheat flour, oatmeal, salt, remaining sugar and baking soda
Preheat the oven to 180 deg C
Grease a loaf pan and line it with a baking sheet. I generally use the baking sheet so that its maintains the shape, comes out easily and lesser cleaning !
Add the oil and yoghurt to the purée. Stir well and then add the vinegar
Add this to the flour in the large bowl and stir gently 4-5 times, till it all comes together
Add the strawberry pieces and stir one more time
Bake for 25-30 mins. Allow to cool slightly before you cut into it
Enjoy it with a cup of tea or coffee