King of German Mercenaries

After sending off the military corps of Spain and the Teutonic States, Marin immediately turned his attention to domestic construction. Now that an agreement has been reached, the 18,000 young Saxons will all belong to Marin's private serfs from now on.

As a feudal landowner, how could Marin tolerate these people eating idle meals? Therefore, Marin immediately dismantled and reorganized the 18,000 strong men, and began to form a construction team. Because, Marin plans to dig a trench and open a canal...

Of course, Marin still has another task - to expand the city of Aurich. As the capital of East Frisian, Aurich naturally cannot be as small as before.

Moreover, the palace where Marin lives now is too small and dark. Marin also plans to expand the palace, at least to a place with a large garden.

At the moment, no farmland has been reclaimed around the city of Orich. So, Marin lets the city expand without expropriating farmland.

Although it is important to dig trenches and open canals, Marin feels that building new capitals is also more important. Therefore, Marin decided to divide a group of people among the 18,000 young people as a construction team to expand the city of Aurich.

To this end, Malin specially sent people out of the 18,000 young people to select about 3,000 people who knew the craftsmanship of masons and masons, and formed a construction engineering team separately. As for the other 15,000 people, they were organized into wasteland reclamation teams, responsible for digging ditches and canals and cleaning up swamps...

In addition, Marin estimated that the Duke of Saxony must give priority to redeeming those knights. Therefore, the 7,000 regular infantry prisoners of war will not leave for a while.

Naturally, Marin would not keep them in vain. Therefore, under the supervision of the soldiers, these 7,000 regular infantry prisoners of war were also pulled by Marin to work as coolies...

As for the knights, Marin really wanted to send them all down to work. However, Marin finally gave up the tempting idea for fear of being sprayed by European aristocrats. The last time Marin let the musketeers hammer a large number of plate armor heavy cavalry in front of the battle, many people have criticized them. If the knight captives are sent to the land as coolies, it is estimated that they will be hostile to the knight class. Therefore, Marin had no choice but to support these people first.

Of course, Marin won't serve these uncles with delicious food. Usually, just let them eat some brown bread. Moreover, these black breads are not the pure rye black bread that Marin eats in his own army.

The food for the 18,000 young and strong coolies is not pure black bread. But because of the fear of gnawing the teeth of these coolies, Marin ordered that black bread should not be mixed with stones. Also, Marin prohibits adding dirt to brown bread. Because the soil is indigestible and affects work.

However, it was also impossible for Marin to feed the prisoners of plain brown bread. So, what is adulteration with? There must be wild vegetables, which are originally food, and can also increase vitamins. Sawdust can also be added, and it is also rich in cellulose...

In addition, Marin has introduced a new inexpensive added ingredient - grass bran...  

In the last life, Marin, who lived in the countryside, also raised pigs at home. Before the popularity of pig feed, pigs were often fed with bran at home. There are two kinds of chaff - one is bran, which is obtained by crushing the husk of rice. This bran is very nutritious and is a very good feed. Similarly, there is the bran of wheat. Of course, in Europe at the moment, because of the low grain production, wheat bran is also an important grain, which is mixed with flour to make bread. There is even wheat bran in the "pure" brown bread that ordinary people eat. Only in the pure black bread eaten by nobles, the wheat bran is separated.

As for another conventional raw material for feeding pigs, it is the straw chaff obtained by crushing rice straw or wheat straw. The nutritional value of grass bran is far less than that of grain bran, but it is also a little nutritious. Before the popularization of feed for rural pigs, the most common food for domestic pigs was grass bran. As for the bran, it is regarded as the "concentrate" of pigs. Of course, grass bran is not eaten by fattened pigs because it is generally nutritious, because it does not gain weight. Generally speaking, straw chaff is eaten by old sows. Because, when old sows are not farrowing and nursing,

No need for high nutrition, as long as you are not hungry. Only when the cubs are pregnant and breastfeeding are they fed with grain bran, which is more nutritious.

That is to say, grass bran is a kind of hunger, but it is not nutritious. The black-hearted Marin, although it is forbidden to mix stones and soil with bread, quietly ordered people to mix straw chaff in cheap black bread...

After all, the cost of straw chaff is extremely low. The raw material for the production of straw chaff is the rye straw that is used as fuel for rural soil stoves. However, one thing that makes Marin's headache is that the raw material of straw bran is easy to obtain, but it is very difficult to process in this era.

Because Marin did not have a high-speed rotating grinder in his hand, he could not quickly smash the rye straw into straw chaff. Therefore, at present, the processing method of straw chaff is still very primitive stone grinding - that is, putting dry rye straw on the stone grinding...

However, it is difficult to grind rye straw into powder. Put ten pounds of rye straw on it, and it is not bad to be able to grind one kilogram. If it is replaced with more difficult-to-grind straw, Marin estimates that half a catty of straw chaff will not be able to be ground. After all, wheat straw is more brittle than straw and is relatively easy to grind. Fortunately, Marin has now built a lot of Dutch windmills that drive the stone mill, which does not require much manpower. Then, rye straw is everywhere. Although it's a waste of time, adding straw crumbs to brown bread is an excellent business practice that saves costs...

Originally, Marin was still very uneasy in his heart. He felt that his heart was too dark to let those coolies eat chaff. In order not to make the taste of the brown bread worse, Marin also specially instructed the bakers to add less straw chaff.

However, Kohler, who was in charge of logistics, was even darker than him. Marin ordered to add 20% straw chaff to the bread, and Kohler directly asked to add 30%...

In Kohler's view, Marin's idea of ​​adding grass crumbs to bread is absolutely genius. Moreover, Kohler felt that adding grass chaff was much better than adding stones and dirt.

You know, black bread with dirt and stones added is almost as hard as bricks, and it can be used directly for fights. When I ate, I was particularly stubborn.

But after replacing the soil and stones with grass chaff, the brown bread doesn't look like a brick, and it tastes much softer. It's not comparable to plain brown bread, but it's so much better than those "black stick" brown breads.

At least, Kohler, who used to eat "black baguette" bread for a long time, believes that brown bread with straw bran is more like food than "black baguette" bread and tastes better.

In this way, at the insistence of Kohler, who was in charge of logistics, all the prisoners of war, except those knights and gentlemen, usually eat black bread, which is "mixed" black bread with 10% wild vegetables, 10% sawdust and 30% grass chaff.

In other words, only half of this bread is rye flour...

But what makes Marin strange is that the prisoners of war who came from civilians did not reject this kind of bread at all...

This is also true that Marin has never eaten real "black stick" bread, the kind of black stick bread that can be used as a brick, and the black-hearted boss can mix 20% of the soil in it. When the dirt is dried in the oven, can it not be hard? Therefore, when eating black bread, it is often boiled with hot water. Because, you need to soften those earthy ingredients with hot water, otherwise you won't be able to drink...

The black bread mixed with straw bran is different. Anyway, straw bran is also edible - although the grade is too low. But for the poor people in the Middle Ages, the ingredients in the bread are all edible, which is already a good treatment. After all, grass bran can also be digested by the stomach, but it is not nutritious, but at least it is hungry.

Even Kohler plans to promote brown bread with straw husks nationwide. Because this technology is too cost-effective. Replacing rye with cheap straw chaff is a huge cost saving in itself. For business-minded Europeans, it's a bargain...

But Marin opposed letting his people eat brown bread with 30% straw husks, because he needed healthy people. Although straw bran is edible, it is not nutritious. If the national body is too thin, when Marin needs to mobilize the national to serve as a soldier, he will recruit a bunch of skinny monkeys with little strength.

Therefore, Marin has no objection to Kohler's promotion of grass bran bread in the country. However, Marin requested that the ratio of straw chaff be reduced by half and changed to 10%...

This brown bread with 15% straw crumbs quickly became popular in East Friesland and became a staple food for East Friesian townsfolk and fishermen. Then, this bread, also named "Kohler Brown Bread"...

As for the real original creator, Marin, because he felt that it was disgraceful, he put the credit to Kohler, who presided over it. But what made Marin stunned later was that Kohler gained huge popularity because he "invented" the cheap "Koehler brown bread", which made Marin a little jealous...