Name: Cheap Bread
Ingredients: 1¼ pounds coarse bran; 1 gallon water; flour (amount as needed)

Cheap Bread

Ingredients

1¼ pounds coarse bran
1 gallon water
flour (amount as needed)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the bran

Remove the coarsest flake bran from the flour.
Boil the bran in the water for 10 minutes.
Strain the bran mixture and let it cool to a warm temperature.

Make and bake the bread

Mix the strained liquid with flour to make the dough.
Bake the bread in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until done.

Refresh stale bread

To refresh stale bread, place it in the oven for 20 minutes.

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

Coarse bran: Adds bulk and a coarse, dense texture to the loaf.
Flour: Its gluten-forming proteins build the structure that holds the dough together.

“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.