Suffer the miller to remove from the flour only the coarse flake bran.
Of this bran, boil five or six pounds in four and a half gallons of
water; when the goodness is extracted from the bran,--during which
time the liquor will waste half or three-quarters of a gallon,--strain
it and let it cool. When it has cooled down to the temperature of new
milk, mix it with fifty-six pounds of flour and as much salt and yeast
as would be used for other bread; knead it exceedingly well; let it
rise before the fire, and bake it in small loaves: small loaves are
preferable to large ones, because they take the heat more equally.
There are two advantages in making bread with bran water instead of
plain water; the one being that there is considerable nourishment in
bran, which is thus extracted and added to the bread; the other, that
flour imbibes much more of bran water than it does of plain water; so
much more, as to give in the bread produced almost a fifth in weight
more than the quantity of flour made up with plain water would have
done. These are important considerations to the poor. Fifty-six pounds
of flour, made with plain water, would produce sixty-nine and a half
pounds of bread; made with bran water, it will produce eighty-three
and a half pounds.