Name: Economical Bread
Ingredients: 5 lbs coarse flake bran; 4 gallons water; 56 lbs flour; coarse sea salt to taste

Economical Bread

Ingredients

5 lbs coarse flake bran
4 gallons water
56 lbs flour
coarse sea salt to taste

Directions

Boil the bran in more than 4 gallons of water until smooth.
Strain to obtain 3 gallons and 3 quarts of clear bran-water.
Knead the flour with the bran-water and add salt to taste.

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 dough structure once kneaded with liquid, giving the loaf its body.
Coarse flake bran: Boiled into the liquid to add fiber and a hearty, earthy texture to the bread.

“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.