Bread – Quick-cooking vs. regular oats for bread

It's definitely asking for rolled oats, not prepared oats. It's just like oatmeal cookies.

It's up to you whether you use normal rolled oats, quick-cooking, or instant. I use normal in my crumbles, but you might choose quick or instant if you think the normal retain too much texture. Personal preference! They'll all work, though, so you can just use what you've got on hand.

(When I do oatmeal for breakfast, I prepare normal rolled oats as if they were instant - just add boiling water. I like some texture.)

And while I'm at it, general advice: crumble topping is something you can easily do without a recipe, just throwing in the ingredients until it holds together a bit, but is nice and crumbly. So don't worry too much about exactness here. It'll come out great.

A bigger container is definitely the 'instant' solution.

I've never hear of fruit preventing overflow. I'd guess the theory there is that it has something to do with the fruit interfering with the bubble to prevent them from forming...but I'd doubt it without A LOT of fruit.

Generally I've done two methods:

• Reduce the power and increase the cooking time. Cut the power by 30% or so and increase the cooking time, this seems to prevent as much of a rapid boil and alleviates the problem.

• Determine the time right before it starts to boil over, cut power off, cover it tightly and just let coast the rest of the way. This is particularly effective if you're cooking in a vessel with good thermal retention.