A Utah restaurant staple becomes streamlined for the home kitchen with this recipe for Mormon Muffin Bread. A spin-off, this loaf bread has all of the flavor and all of the fiber of its original muffin counterparts. 

If you don’t live near Ogden, Utah, then you may not know of this gem of a recipe. In the 1970s, when this restaurant first opened, its Parisian-style café vibe of an eatery had a peculiar menu item — Mormon Muffins. Why and how the muffins are called such is unknown. People speculate that eating that much fiber may cleanse things on a high plane of existence, but it is mere guesswork. The restaurant gives away the recipe for free, and it’s not an easy process, requiring an industrial amount of ingredients and for the batter to rest in the refrigerator overnight to develop or ferment. Here, this version is a nod to its predecessor without tiring out the cook. 

Here, this recipe is cut down and streamlined for quick preparation. The leavening is mixed with boiling hot water and rests to the side as the dry and wet ingredients are prepared. 

The original recipe calls for both bran flakes and 40% bran flakes — a brand of Kellogg’s cereal that is hard to come by in stores nowadays. To make things simpler, any old bran flake cereal you find in the store will do!

After the wet and dry ingredients are mixed together, go ahead and divide the batter up between two loaf pans and bake in the oven until baked all of the way through.

This Mormon Muffin Bread has a perfect texture. The earthiness of the bran flakes is lightened by the slight sweetness from the sugar in the batter.

Warm spices in the batter accentuate the hearty, satisfying quality of the bran.

If you want to eat this bread just like they do in Utah, go ahead and slather on a hefty smear of honey butter!