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Buns with varying amounts of oat flour from left to right: 0%, 10%, and 30%.
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Effect of oat flour on bread
［実験］パンにオート麦粉の影響（まとめのみ）
【實驗】燕麥粉對麵包的影響（只有結論）
This has been a personal project that I've had at the back of my mind for some time now. Finally found the time to actually conduct this simple experiment. TLDR at the end of the post. Oat is one of the healthiest grains and I am especially interested in its cholesterol-lowering properties. Unfortunately, due to the lack of gluten, the grain by itself cannot be baked into bread. At least not bread with the texture we find in leavened wheat bread.
I wanted to see how much wheat flour I could replace with oat and still get a soft and fluffy texture with the added health benefits of oats. I'm not going into detail about how healthy oats are but if you're interested I recommend reading evidence-based health articles on Healthline.
While doing a bit of research, I found an article that claimed that substituting 10% of wheat flour with oat flour produced the best results. In this experiment, I tried baking bread with 0% (control), 10%, and 30% oat flour.
Ingredients
- Wheat flour 100g, 90g, or 70g
- Oat flour 0g, 10g, or 30g
- Sugar 8g
- Salt 2g
- Instant yeast 2g
- Butter 6g
- Water 60g
- Bread improver 3g
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A windmill in Leiden
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The benefit of living in the Netherlands is that I can buy flour milled in windmills. I've been trying out different brands (might come back to this in another post) as high gluten (for bread) and low gluten (for cake) flours are not always clearly marked.
French bread flour (left) and oat flour (right).
To keep the variables as small as possible, I used a bread machine to do the kneading. 15 mins per dough.
Kneading with the bread machine.
This is how the doughs look after kneading. From the left: 0%, 10%, and 30%. In hindsight, should have taken the photos in similar containers and lighting 😅
As expected, the 0% dough is more elastic. The doughs with oat flour were a bit stickier, and lumpier because of the bran bits. I put the doughs back in the bread machine to proof them at 30-40°C.
Before (left) and after (right) first rise.
All doughs seem to have risen nicely. After that, I divided them and let them rise for a second time. The left column is 0%, followed by 10% and 30%.
Before (left) and after (right) second rise.
The 100% wheat flour dough obviously had the best gluten formation and rose to about twice its original size. The 10% and 30% oat flour doughs didn't rise as much. Strangely, if I compare the two, the 30% dough seems to be slightly bigger than the 10%. Finally, I baked the buns at 200°C for 15mins.
All the buns browned nicely. On the inside, they look like this:
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| Buns with varying amounts of oat flour from left to right: 0%, 10%, and 30%. |
Appearance
The buns with oat flour rose less so they're smaller but I don't see a big difference between 10% and 30%. The obvious difference is in the crust where you see the oat brans.
Texture
The 0% oat bun is, as a regular bun should, soft and fluffy. With increasing oat flour, the bun gets denser and slightly chewier. Personally, not an issue for me. The chewy texture reminds me a bit of mochi (sweet rice cakes) and the mochi texture is something some people in Japan enjoy in their bread. One noticeable aspect of the oat flour was the bits of oat bran so the buns were not as smooth as the white flour buns. But I guess this is not so different from whole wheat bread. Perhaps more an issue with the brand of oat flour than the flour itself, the bran is still quite coarse and some of it gets stuck in your teeth. Not so much for the 10% bun but definitely the 30%. I find that a bit annoying and definitely a minus. Note to self: buy finely milled oat flour.
Taste
Oat flour gives the buns a nutty flavour which I kinda like. One puzzling thing was the buns tasted saltier with more oat flour. The salt amount used for all doughs was the same so I cannot explain where this salty taste comes from. It's not off-putting but it is something noticeable. It's been some time since I last had porridge but I don't remember oats being salty. I assume it's because of the brand of oat flour I used. Unfortunately, I already threw the packaging away and could not check the sodium content.
Smell
I'm not great at detecting nuances in smell. All of them just smelt like bread to me 😂 and they all smelt wonderful.
Conclusion
Besides the issue with the oat bran, which can be easily solved by buying finer oat flour, I definitely see myself substitute some oat flour with wheat flour in my future bread recipes. For now, I would agree that 10% does seem to be the better substitution ratio. Next time, I will try to see if I can make the buns even fluffier and softer and use more oat flour
In short:
Oats have no gluten and thus cannot be used to bake leavened bread.
Oats are much healthier than wheat.
Substituting with oat flour makes bread denser and chewier.
If you're not used to eating bran, it might feel unpleasant in the mouth (haha)
10% seems to be the best without compromising the texture.
Thanks for reading. Hope you found this informative.
I would love to hear your comments and suggestions.
オート麦にグルテンが含まれていないため、（ふわふわ）パンを焼くことができません。
パン生地にオート麦粉を入れたら、パンが重くなり、もっちりします。
ブランドの問題かもしれないが、オート麦粉のふすまが粗すぎてパンの食感を影響してしまいます。細挽きの粉を使えば、問題ないでしょう。
今回の実験結論からいうと、小麦粉の10％をオート麦粉に代用することがベストのようです。
読んでいただいてありがとうございます。 これが参考になれたらうれしいです。
コメントや提案があればぜひ聞かせてください。
結論
如果將燕麥粉加入麵包麵團中，麵包會變得硬一點，但也Q一點。
這可能是品牌問題，但燕麥粉的麩皮磨得不夠細，影響了麵包的口感。 如果用細一點的燕麥粉的話就應該不會有這個問題。
從實驗結論來看，小麥粉的10% 用燕麥粉代替的話對麵包的口感不會有很大的影響。
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