Boston brown bread — AKA “canned bread” — is soft and dense, a little tangy and a little sweet. This historic colonial New England bread is still eaten today sliced and fried with butter then served with baked beans and hot dogs. It’s traditionally made with wheat, rye, and corn flours; hydrated with buttermilk; sweetened with molasses; and leavened with baking soda. Raisins, currants, or even dried blueberries are optional. I’d heard of this bread and knew it was similar to Anadama bread (corn and molasses) but I only recently did a deep dive into its history and recipes. I focused on the recipe in Maggie Glezer’s book Artisan Baking Across America (2000), which is by René Becker of Hi-Rise Bread Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The recipe I created uses Hi-Rise’s flour ratios but otherwise goes off script by leavening the dough with sourdough starter and baking in a loaf pan rather than a coffee can. Sourdough fermentation offers enough tang that milk makes more sense than buttermilk, and tenting the pan with aluminum foil for most of the bake ensures a very soft, almost-steamed crust and crumb. Finally, I reduced the molasses for less sweetness, which results in a lighter color bread that perhaps should be called beige bread.
The recipe is scaled for a medium USA loaf pan 9 x 5 x 2.75 inches. If you’d like to use a Pullman pan and lid, multiply the ingredients by 1.2 for the small Pullman pan and 1.7 for the large Pullman pan.
Almost steamed, soft bread
Here’s just a bit of the history of this bread (and canning) that I learned while working on this recipe which I can’t resist sharing.
Boston brown bread has its origins in the early colonial period of the U.S. when the settlers in New England were struggling to grow the wheat that they’d brought from Europe. Native Americans introduced them to corn cultivation, which along with rye grain, had better yields. Combining these grains, the Puritans began making a pudding-like bread. On Saturdays, they steamed the batter for hours in a mold in a kettle over the hearth and also cooked beans. This pairing was then eaten all weekend so that the Puritans could observe the religious rule of not cooking on Sundays. Over time, molasses, the pre-cursor to rum and part of the transatlantic triangular slave trade, was included in the recipe. In the early 1800s, canning of food was invented* which eventually led to the custom of steaming brown bread in coffee tins. Canned bread achieved mass production in 1928, when the canning company B&M of Portland, Maine began selling to accompany the canned brick-oven baked beans they introduced the year prior.
*The invention of food canning by a French chef, Nicolas Appert, was the result of a contest announced by the French government in 1795 for the best food preservation invention, and impetus behind the contest was to better feed soldiers on France’s multiple military fronts.
Flours in the center bowl, clockwise from top: corn, red fife wheat, rye
Sourdough Boston Brown Bread
Here’s a sourdough-leavened take on Boston Brown Bread, a colonial New England classic with rye, corn, and wheat flours. This variation is baked in a loaf pan and the texture is very tender and moist. Enjoy with baked beans, slathered with butter, or with a piece of sharp cheddar.
Baking Time
1 hour, 20 minutes
Total Time
1 hour, 50 minutes
Ingredients
Baker’s Percentages
- 32% all purpose or bread flour
- 32% rye whole grain flour
- 21% red fife whole grain flour
- 15% corn flour
- 1% salt
- 21% sourdough starter
- 69% milk
- 15% molasses
Instructions
- This bread has a quick and easy mixing, a long first rise and a moderate final proof. Under 70°F ambient temp (or using cold milk), you can let the dough rise unattended overnight. The final proof will range from 2-4 hours, again depending on the ambient temp.
- Whisk together the four flours and salt in a large bowl. Add the milk, sourdough starter, molasses, and optional dried fruit. Mix until thoroughly combined. The dough will have a consistency like thick cement. Smooth out the top with a damp spatula and note the level on the bowl or dough bucket if you transferred it.
- Cover and let the dough rise until it has doubled in size. Depending on the ambient and milk temperatures, this could take anywhere from 6-12 hours. With 85°F milk and kitchen temps under 70°F, an overnight rise should time out well.
- Grease a medium-sized loaf pan (9x5x2.75 inches).
- Scrape the fermented dough out of the bowl onto a floured work surface.
- Flatten the dough into a rectangle that’s about 8 inches wide — this is the side you’ll roll the dough from. The length can vary, but about 12 inches is fine.
- Roll the dough into a tube along the short edge, so the tube is about 8 inches long.
- Place the tube seam-side down in the loaf pan.
- Cover and let the dough rise again until it just crests the rim of the pan. This should take 2-4 hours, depending on the ambient temperature. In a proofing box set to 80°F, my dough needed just under 2 hours.
- Preheat the oven to 325°F.
- Brush the dough with milk and form a tent for your loaf pan by wrapping aluminum foil around the bottom of the pan to shape it, then remove and place the foil on top of the pan, sealing the edges (see Photo Gallery).
- Bake for 1 hour 20 minutes (80 minutes) or until the internal temperature is over 190°F. At 60+ minutes, you can remove the tent to use a probe thermometer and check the temp. Loosely re-cover the bread if you need to continue baking.
- Once the target internal temp is reached, remove the bread from the oven and let it cool out of the pan for at least 2 hours before cutting.
