[Recipe] Honey Oat Bread Rolls (Bread maker version)

One of my problems when it comes to kitchen gadgets is the low utilization of some of the more specialized tools. Case in point is my bread maker, which I have not used for over a year now. I decided to bring it out from storage and whip up something. Now it just so happen that there seems to be an over abundance of quick cooking oat meal at home (don't ask why), so I thought of making some honey oat bread rolls. The bread turned out much better than I have anticipated and variations on what can be placed in between the roll of dough makes this base recipe a great starting point for sweet breads like cinnamon-raisin, cheese or chocolate variants. On my first attempt, I have used butter and crumbled "chocnut" as the filling (a widely popular Filipino crumbly snack made predominantly from ground roasted peanuts, milk powder and cocoa).

This is a type of sweet bread, and if you are familiar with the typical Filipino taste for bread then you will notice that most of them tend to be on the sweet side. The one I made turned out to be nice and chewy (the way I like it) with just the right amount of filling so that it doesn't come off as overly sweet. I am definitely going to make this again. Perhaps with a bit of chopped raisins or blueberries incorporated into the dough.

Ingredients:
3 Cups of bread flour
1 Cup quick cooking oat meal
1 Cup freshly boiled water
1/3 Cup lukewarm water
1/4 Cup honey
10 grams unsalted butter
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 teaspoon iodized salt
Roughly a teaspoon of melted salted butter (for brushing)
4 packets of King Choc Nut candy (optional)

Directions:
Please refer to the individual instructions of your bread maker. Mine is a very basic model with the ability to select "prepare dough" only which will just help with the kneading part and stop after the rising stage. This allows you to take out the dough from the machine and shape the dough to whatever form you like or add in additional ingredients before placing the dough back into the machine and selecting the "bake only" function.

Start by combining the quick cooking oat meal with the freshly boiled water in a bowl and mix thoroughly (making sure you get rid of any lumps) forming a thick paste. Add the honey, butter and salt and mix until blended together. Set aside to cool this mixture.

In a small bowl, proof the active dry yeast in the lukewarm water (you may add a tiny amount of honey to assist in the proofing). Set aside for 5 minutes.

Place the oat meal-honey paste, the yeast mixture and the bread flour into the bread maker and start the kneading process (in my machine this is the "dough" setting). It will go through a series of kneading and rising cycles.

After the machine is done with the dough preparation, take out the dough into a floured surface (I use a silicon mat as my preferred work surface) and separate it into 4 equal parts. Roll each of these into a cylinder roughly 8 inches long. Flatten using a rolling pin. Brush one side of this flat length of dough with the melted salted butter and crumble 1 piece of chocnut for each piece (keeping the crumbled chocnut at the middle since it might burn if it is at the bottom of the baking pan). Roll each dough and place it back on the bread maker. Let it rise for an additional 30 to 45 minutes (some machines have a mode that assists in this rising by warming the machine a little bit).

Bake according to your machine's instructions. I just used the default baking time for mine but the sides turned out a little darker than I would have liked so next time I will reduce the baking time a bit.