{"id":164815,"date":"2025-03-30T11:02:37","date_gmt":"2025-03-30T11:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/recipes\/category-a-b\/bread\/sourdough-boston-brown-bread-breadtopia\/"},"modified":"2025-03-30T11:02:37","modified_gmt":"2025-03-30T11:02:37","slug":"sourdough-boston-brown-bread-breadtopia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=164815","title":{"rendered":"Sourdough Boston Brown Bread \u2013 Breadtopia"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Boston brown bread \u2014 AKA \u201ccanned bread\u201d \u2014 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\u2019s 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\u2019d heard of this bread and knew it was similar to Anadama bread<\/a> (corn and molasses) but I only recently did a deep dive into its history and recipes. I focused on the recipe in Maggie Glezer\u2019s book Artisan Baking Across America (2000)<\/a>, which is by Ren\u00e9 Becker of Hi-Rise Bread Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The recipe I created uses Hi-Rise\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The recipe is scaled for a medium USA loaf pan<\/a> 9 x 5 x 2.75 inches. If you\u2019d like to use a Pullman pan and lid, multiply the ingredients by 1.2 for the small Pullman pan<\/a> and 1.7 for the large Pullman pan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Almost steamed, soft bread<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Here\u2019s just a bit of the history of this bread (and canning) that I learned while working on this recipe which I can\u2019t resist sharing.<\/p>\n

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\nBoston 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\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n

*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\u2019s multiple military fronts.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Flours in the center bowl, clockwise from top: corn, red fife wheat, rye<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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