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Bread

Economical Bread

A bread made by boiling flour, straining bran-water, kneading with salt and yeast, shaping loaves, and baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Economical Bread

Ingredients

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.

Make the bran-water

  1. Boil 5 pounds of flour in more than 4 gallons of water until smooth.

  2. Strain to obtain 3 gallons and 3 quarts of clear bran-water.

Make and bake the bread

  1. Knead 5 pounds of flour with the bran-water, adding salt and yeast as for other bread.

  2. Shape into loaves of about 5 pounds each.

  3. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and bake for 2.5 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the loaves their structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces gas as it works, which lifts and leavens the dough.

The step that matters

Strain to obtain clear bran-water. Straining out the solids leaves a smooth liquid for kneading. Bran left behind would cut into the gluten network and weaken the loaf's texture.

“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.

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