I still don’t have Odlum’s flour—or anything closely resembling the course grind of the stuff—but I decided to soldier on and bake my first loaf of brown bread.

Upon inspection of my girlfriend’s family I realized that in addition to not having the right flour, my iron skillet is way to big and without a lid.  I’m still going to fiddle with this recipe, but I wanted my first loaf to be edible.  That being said, I turned to a Mark Bittman suggestion and used a 9-inch loaf pan.  I didn’t feel as rustic using this flimsy piece of aluminum, but the loaf looks good.

The recipe is an adapted version of Bittman’s recipe combined with the family recipe.  It mostly comes from Bittman, however.

• 3 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 cup wheat bran
• 3 tablespoons wheat germ
• ½ cup white flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 egg
• 2 cups whole milk
• Bob’s Red Mill 10-grain cereal (for sprinkling)

1. Mix the dry ingredients by hand.
2. Add the egg and milk and stir the sucker.  It’ll take some working to incorporate all the dry ingredients.
3. Spray the baking pan and spoon in the batter.  Shape the loaf and sprinkle with the 10-grain (this should be steel cut oats but none were on hand).
4. Score an “X” in the bread and bake at 400º for about an hour.