why had I not heard of horse bread?

…n which English society relied. Horse bread, typically a flat, brown bread baked alongside human bread, fueled England’s equine transport system from the Middle Ages up until the early 1800s. It was so logistically important that it was more highly regulated than its human counterpart, with commercial bakers adhering to laws dictating who could bake horse bread, as well as the bread’s price, size, and occasionally even its composition. The ubiquitous bread was made from a dough of bran, bean flour, or a combination of the two, and typically was flat, coarse, and brown.

Wild! Why have I not seen mention of this in literature? Class factors? Had you heard of it before this? Did everyone know about horse bread but me?

This brown bread was probably more appetizing than it sounds, Rubel says. Bran carries the nutty, complex flavor associated with whole grains, and to form bran into a dough, …

Oh, give me a break, bran stans.