Name: To Make Brown Wheaten Bread
Ingredients: 1 Winchester bushel (59 pounds) of good wheat; water; yeast; coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')

To Make Brown Wheaten Bread

Brown wheat bread is made by grinding wheat, mixing with water, yeast, and salt, forming dough, dividing into loaves, baking, and cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription

From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients

To Make Brown Wheaten Bread

18 loaves

Ingredients

1 Winchester bushel (59 pounds) of good wheat
water
yeast
coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

Grind the wheat at the mill, including the bran, until it weighs 58 pounds.
Mix the ground wheat with water, yeast, and salt to form a dough.
Weigh the dough; it should be about 88 pounds.
Divide the dough into 18 loaves.

Bake and cool

Bake the loaves in a 400°F (200°C) oven until thoroughly baked.
Remove the loaves from the oven and let them cool for 2 hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Wheat: Provides the flour and bran that form the structure and the brown, whole-grain flavor.
Water: Hydrates the flour so its proteins and starches can form a cohesive dough.
Yeast: Ferments sugars in the dough, producing gas that makes the loaves rise.
Coarse sea salt: Controls yeast activity and strengthens the dough's gluten for better texture and flavor.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.