Boston Brown Bread

Mrs J was spelunking in the big freezer the other day and brought out a package of meat that a pal had given to us as a thank you for something or another.  I stuffed it into the freezer and it remained there until it was illuminated by Mrs J’s headlamp and freed from its frosty confines.

I only had a vague memory of what it was although the label bore the words “brown sugar cured”.  My best guess was bacon and I was dreading trying to untangle what would have been a real mess.  Fortunately is was two thick slices of country ham.

Mmm… country ham.  I promptly covered a bowl of dried pinto beans with water to soak, and set the ham into the fridge to wait for the morning and a long slow simmer with the beans and onions.

Now, ham and beans require a nice bread to go with them.  Cornbread is traditional but I was willing to try something else so I Googled “beans + bread” and came across several recipes for Boston brown bread.  The recipes all varied in ingredients and methods so I combined ingredients from different recipes and the baking method from another.

Here is what I ended up with:  1 cup rye flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour, 1 cup corn meal, 1 t salt, 1 t cinnamon, 1/2 t allspice, 2 cups buttermilk, 1 cup raisins, 3/4 cup molasses, 1 t baking powder, and 1 t baking soda.  I mixed that all together in a bowl and then poured it into a standard 9×5 bread loaf tin and baked it at 350 for 50 minutes.

Most of the recipes I read called for the bread mixture to be poured into tin cans, covered with foil, and then steamed until done.  I may well have done that, just to be authentic, but we didn’t have any empty cans around.  One recipe mentioned cooking it in a coffee can.  That brings back memories!  Memories when a coffee can held two pounds of coffee.  But I digress.  Where are the beans?  The bread just didn’t seem right for the ham and beans so I made some cornbread instead.  LOL

3 thoughts on “Boston Brown Bread

  1. Mmm, brown bread, slathered in butter and pan fried served with baked beans and hot dogs. Favorite childhood memory. Of course we bought our bread in a can….

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  2. Yup, the search for beans and bread turned up this brown bread in the context of serving it with baked beans. The molasses in it seem more attuned to baked beans than the pinto beans that sparked the search in the first place. One suggestion was to serve the bread with a smear of cream cheese. Mrs J just bought some this morning, I’ll try it this afternoon.

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  3. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the cans of bread outside of the East Coast. Glad you made a recipe. Now I’m going to have to try it. Yum. I’ve never had it with cream cheese, but I’d probably still fry it in butter and then add cream cheese (I guess I’m all about the butter frying…)

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