Thanks for this recipe. It's a really nice bread. I did it all in the breadmachine, using 3 cups of flour and kneading in additional flour after, until it felt good in my hands. I did try subbing out half the oats for oatbran and I like the results. I actually used about 3/4 oatbran and 1/2 cup of oats. I really like the flavor. Is Bob's Red Mill Grain cereal like Red River cereal? We always have a box of Red River in the pantry and I'm thinking this would be similar? I also reduced the honey by half, but added no molasses. it still tastes great with just 1/4 cup of honey.

We keep our house cool, too, and my challa rises fine on the counter. You can even do the second rise in the refrigerator overnight. I usually make a few at a time, so after the first rise, I shape the loaves and wrap (in foil) and freeze the extras. When I want to use them, I take them out and unwrap, put on a greased sheet or in a greased loaf pan, cover with the greased foil from the freezer, and let it sit 6 hours before baking. Comes out exactly the same as if I bake it the same day. As for storage, I, too, had read that the refrigerator makes bread go stale fast. We keep sliced bread in the freezer, because we don't use it very fast. I toast it straight from the freezer or pack lunch sandwiches with frozen bread (keeps the filling fresh, too); to eat right away, I nuke it for a few seconds, but only as much as I'm sure we will eat. For the homemade or other special bread, we keep it in plastic bags in a breadbox in the pantry. I don't know why it's so, but a breadbox really, really does keep bread fresh so much longer.

I heat mine from a frozen state all the time. Back when I had a husband and a family at home, I would bake 8 or 9 loaves of bread every week, eat one that day and wrap the rest in foil and freeze. Unless we had a heavy bread eating week, there were usually some left, so I usually had a choice of several kinds of bread to warm for dinner....and I always warmed them at 300 wrapped in foil and usually frozen, but maybe having spent 30 minutes wrapped on the counter. It tasted every bit as good as warm from the oven! I find that if you thaw bread unwrapped, it dries out. My percieved reason is that if your bread is not wrapped tightly in foil, it loses moisture in the freezer which collects inside the wrapper in the form of frost. If you unwrap the bread while still frozen that frost melts and makes the outside of the bread damp....but is you thaw that berad still wrapped or in the oven, that moisture is redistrubuted through out the loaf. Also...if you have not frozen a loaf and it gets a bit dry, run the loaf under water then wrap in foil and stick it into a 300 oven for about 20 minutes. The moisture will distribute itself through out the bread....then if you remove the foil and heat a bit longer the crust will crisp again. Linda C

There is both an electric and a gas oven in my kitchen. My gas oven is ''old-fashioned'' (I believe someone referred to it as analog, because it has a dial, rather than a digital temperature selection) and the thermostat cycles quite a bit to work at keeping the heat at a particular temperature. It isn't as accurate as the electric, there is no window or light to view what's going on in there, and the gas oven takes longer to bake exactly the same thing as the electric oven. There is no convection with a gas oven, like with an electric, and if you've used a convection oven, you'll know what the advantages are. (I always preheat in convection mode, because it's much faster; I bake my pizza on convection as well as bread.) I know about this because I've tested both my ovens extensively. Yes, Velodoug knows exactly what he's talking about. I have a gas range mainly for the cooktop, and the oven for those times we lose power; typically in the winter during storms. It's my second oven, and a reliable ''back-up''. (No...Just like Doug, I don't turn it on in the summer months either.) My electric oven is better insulated, has a window so I can check progress without opening the door, and because the temperature is digital, it typically ends up where I want it to be. With a gas oven, you regulate a recipe by sight and smell, not by time the recipe states it should be done. If you're hanging out in the kitchen all day, or using your old gas stove to heat the room (like I used to 30 years ago), No Problem. It's Done When It's Done. Your Nose Knows. In the electric oven, my pizza recipe turns out the same every single time, and I know exactly how long to bake it to get consistent results. Not so with the gas oven. That doesn't mean you won't get good product; it simply isn't as accurate and doesn't bake the same way. You tend to get moist heat with gas, and there is a natural convection, but side by side, I'll go with electric every time. I wouldn't spend that kind of money ($7K) on any gas oven (mine is also a Lacanche), over a Gaggenau for what you want to use it for. (I don't have experience with other pizza ovens, so I only know about what I'm using. I thought you were asking for experience, not just opinions.) Typically, I preheat my oven to 550 degrees before putting in a pizza, which is done to a golden brown with perfectly charred cheese and a golden bottom crust in 8 minutes. I use my oven heavily for everything. Good luck to you. I know it's daunting to spend serious money on appliances that don't do what you want them to. I hope your next appliance will give you everything you want from it.