#.   A WOMAN’S BRIEFS – September 28, 2022    OAT GROATS

Hummm, how many months has that little bag of seed been buried by other bags of stuff there, on the narrow door shelf of our small standing freezer?

Oats – well, who doesn’t know oats. When I was a kid, I used oats in an attempt to coerce my brother’s fierce gelded quarter-horse, Sox. Sox played along, solid mountain of muscle that he was. I should have noticed that while he ate, his tail swished, and his ears never lifted far enough forward to indicate friendship.

“You’ve got him eating right out of your hand.”

I did, indeed. Silly me.

“User,” shot the look Sox sent once the oats got consumed. It doesn’t take long, only seconds really, for a horse to bare his teeth, tucking that thick, twelve-muscled tongue behind lifted lips. When there is no “obvious olfactory stimuli, such as unusual smells,” to cause this action (wrote one expert on such things,) a horse bares his teeth as a sign of aggression or agitation.

Got it.

Sox was a master User. I was his small kid foil. If in literature a foil exists to expose something essential about the protagonist, I fit the bill. I definitely fed the right lines to Sox. In this case oats. As a foil should, I enabled observers to notice essential things about Sox, the protagonist. Sox was a bully.

I read once, “If what you’re doing doesn’t work, change what you are doing.”

So yesterday I used oats to make bread. In this case, I used oat groats. And in this case, as I sometimes do, I made bread without a recipe. I needed to use my sourdough starter. I wanted to make bread for a particular neighbor.

I refreshed my starter.

I found those oat groats in the freezer. I cooked them, drained them, cooled them, and listened to a book on tape while I was at it.

I tossed in some whole wheat flour, just enough, I thought, not to overwhelm the weight of white bread flour. And, unusually, when I work with sourdough, I added some dry yeast (I was in a hurry).

Why not a bit of olive oil? No, I decided to use avocado oil.

Some sea-salt, water, of course, and a small bowlful of those room-temperature oat groats – the whole grain seed with the husk removed. Groats add a bit of a nutty flavor, and, definitely, groats add texture.

The dough got kneaded.

The dough spent some hours rising.

The dough looked like it belonged in loaf pans.

The dough was put in loaf pans, and was allowed to rise well above pan’s edge.

The dough looked like it needed an egg wash to top it off, to make it appear regal. Sox was regal-looking, red-bodied, white sox above each of his four hooved feet. But looks can be deceiving. My bread didn’t bite back.

The bread got shared. It turned out nicely. It was a good start to a relatively safe day for me while women in Iran filled the streets in protest, in great danger but weary of being demeaned; while people of Cuba, every one of them, were without power, and in many cases without shelter; while people of Ukraine, every one of them to some degree, suffer the effects of war; while people of Florida anticipate in thousands of ways what a storm named Ian might do to each one of them, while families in Russia begin to learn new truths, and attempt to flee their homeland. I can’t change any of that, but I can change what I’m doing, if what I was doing, doesn’t work.