Boston Brown Bread - A History
A steamed bread that has a mix of Old and New World grains and is a symbol of nostalgia in New England
“Our bread, to be sure, was the black compound of rye and Indian which the economy of Massachusetts then made the common form, because it was the result of what could be most easily raised on her nard and stony soil; but I can inform all whom it may concern that rye and Indian bread smoking hot, on a cold winter morning, together with savoury sausages, pork and beans, formed a breakfast fit for a king, if the king had earned it by getting up in a cold room, washing in ice-water, tumbling snow-drifts, and foddering cattle”.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Oldtown Folks, (p. 224 chap.22)
I spent several weeks researching for today’s piece. It’s the middle of winter here in Boston and even if I didn’t wake up in a cold room, had to wash in ice-water or had to take care of any farm animal, I did feel the “tumbling snow-drifts”. I do understand the kind of weather that requires a hearty meal of baked beans, savoury sausages and brown bread. The kind of meal many New Englanders still enjoy on Saturdays as a nostalgic family tradition.
Today we will explore the history of this iconic bread that is cooked in a tin and many times accompanied by the also classic Boston baked beans. You can read about them in the article I wrote last year.
What is the Boston Brown Bread
The Boston brown bread is “a colonial New England classic made with cornmeal, rye or whole wheat flour, and enriched with molasses.”, says Yvonne Ruperti for Serious Eats. Also known as “New England brown bread”, “Yankee brown bread”, or just “brown bread; it is traditionally steamed in a can, which helps hold the batter, as the bread has very little gluten.
It normally contains a combination of three flours: cornmeal, rye flour and wheat flour (often whole wheat, or a mix with white wheat). And molasses, which gives it a complex kind of sweetness; buttermilk and baking soda, which bring acidity and help rise the bread. Often, raisins are also incorporated for a fun, moist treat.
To make it, you need to mix the dry ingredients in a bowl, with some salt, and then the wet ingredients separately (molasses and buttermilk). The wet ingredients are then incorporated to the dry ones and the mix is spooned into clean metal cans (you can reuse tomato cans in which the top is removed). These are covered with foil paper and inserted into a big pot with water and a steaming rack. Once the lid is on, the bread batter should cook slowly with the produced steam. About 2 hours later, the bread will be done. You can check out Serious Eats recipe for more detailed instructions.
1. Supermarket-bought brown bread
I did not make the bread at home this time, but I did try it in different formats. Massachusetts baker and founder of Wordloaf Andrew Janjigian, recommended me different versions to get a full picture. The first one, I had intended to try some months ago when I wrote about Boston baked beans, but I never got around to do it.
It’s the classic B&M version of the brown bread. This New England company has been selling canned food since 1867 but it was in 1927 when it got famous nation-wide with their canned baked beans.
“Dense, moist, and made from natural ingredients, B&M’s brown bread is a solid ready-to-eat representative of the classic New England dish”, says writer Aimee Tucker for New England magazine. The ingredients they use are similar to the ones listed above: whole wheat flour, water, molasses, dextrose, whole grain rye flour, whey, degerminated yellow corn meal, baking soda, buttermilk, salt, corn oil. The flavor of their bread is savoury and a little bitter.
I tried it with their canned baked beans and I will admit it was not my cup of tea. Ross, who is more used to canned meals due to his English heritage, finished off the dish for lunch.
2. Local bakery brown bread
The second version Andrew recommended me to try was a brown bread by a local bakery located in the city of Cambridge (MA). I ordered two loafs that cost me $15 each. Compared to the $8.35 I paid for the B&M can, the expectations where high, and it did not disappoint. Almost double the price, and I’d say more than double the tastiness. It was a much more palatable version to my Spanish taste buds. Sweet, moist and with a lovely blueberry surprise.
In Hi-Rise Bread Company, the brown bread is not steamed, but baked. However, they respect the tradition of cooking it inside a can, which gives the loaf a characteristic set of ridges. “Our traditional Boston brown bread is made with whole wheat, rye, yellow corn and white flours, unsulphured molasses, milk and dried blueberries”, says in the website, but I think they also add sugar and spices. I had it with some butter and later on with some cream cheese, and I thought it was a perfect tea treat.
Only that was not the traditional use of brown bread. As a savoury bread, it used to accompany dishes like baked beans and franks (frankfurters). And so, the last version Andrew recommended was a step closer to the original.
3. Original recipe brown bread
This final version was created by Andrew himself at it will be shared in his newsletter, Wordloaf, in a few days. He created a recipe maintaining the typical flavours of the Boston brown bread, with a twist: "In place of buttermilk for acidity—which, along with the molasses, reacts with the baking soda to give it volume—it uses sourdough discard instead, along with dry milk powder to replace the lost milk solids.” The recipe is well-thought-out and it considers any type of sourdough discard accounting for adjustments on the quantities of the other flours, so it ends up balanced.
His recipe also includes raisins and it’s the most complex of the three versions in my opinion. It has a certain sweetness but the predominant flavor is the rye, without it being too overpowering. It has reminiscences of the breads you would find in Germany or Scandinavia: robust. But also, a bit grainy from the corn, moist from the butter, complex from the sourdough and sweet from the raisins and the molasses. A delicious bite.
When was it created
Andrew’s sourdough brings a twist on the typical brown bread, but it is actually closer to the original version that one could think.
When the English settlers arrived in New England in the early seventeenth century, they had to face the frustration of not being able to grow their grain of preference: wheat. The sandy soil of the region was not suitable for the most prestigious of grains, but it was perfect for an indigenous crop: corn — which flour was referred as “Indian meal” or just “Indian”. Until the second quarter of the nineteenth century, when the Erie Canal— which connects the Hudson River and Lake Erie east-west— was opened (1825), wheat grown in the west was not easily available nor affordable.
Corn had a predominant place in the diet of New Englanders for centuries, as we saw with the history of Indian pudding. But another European grain that took the place of wheat was rye, which grew better in the area due to his natural resistance.
“As a result, the colonists’ predicament was that they had abundant supplies of a grain that at best was unfamiliar and at worst was tainted with savagery, along with limited supplies of other grains that they had never particularly liked back home; but that they had, except for the few of them that were of gentry stock, always reluctantly incorporated into their bread. From these uncompromising ingredients they fashioned what became the principal bread of colonial and early national New England — Rye and Indian. The full name was soon elided in common parlance, becoming Ryaninjun.”
Stavely and Fitzgerald, America’s Founding Food (p. 24, chap 1)
This bread, the precursor to our steamed brown bread, was traditionally risen with yeast from beer barrels and baked directly on the oven floor or on a bed of oak or cabbage leaves, which gave it a unique flavor. Ryaninjun became the standard bread for brick-oven cooking.
Many cookbooks attempted to explain how to use the yeast to rise the bread, as it was temperamental and didn’t always work. Some suggested creating a sourdough starter with the remnants of beer, hops, wheat or rye bran, milk, and potatoes, which would then be added to the flour mix for Ryaninjun. Not too dissimilar to Andrew’s recipe.
In the earliest published recipes from 1829, the terms “Rye and Indian” and “brown bread” were used interchangeably. By then, the Erie Canal had opened, making wheat flour more accessible, and it began to be included in the bread mix.
In the mid-nineteenth century, as wheat became more readily available, people began to idealize the “old brown bread,” which had once been barely tolerated. “The long-established mixture of cornmeal and rye was placed in a tin (as opposed to a bag) pudding container and thus was born the steamed Boston Brown Bread”, say Stavely and Fitzgerald (p. 28).
A typical recipe for brown bread from the second half of the nineteenth century, “Mrs. Reed’s Brown Bread” substituted the yeast for baking soda and added molasses and buttermilk to the mix, creating the definitive recipe (though this particular one curiously excludes rye).
Nowadays, it’s the canned, steamed brown bread the one that awakens nostalgia. Many associate it with Saturday dinners. “Always the Saturday supper at my grandmother’s kitchen, and as children we relished Saturday supper there”, says this writer. And one of many homesick comments on this recipe says: “I grew up eating BB, hot dogs and BB beans as a little girl until we moved south. When o would go north it was my first request on visits as well as whole belly clams”. Someone else comments on the same New England magazine recipe saying: “This is what I grew up eating on SATURDAY nights, never Sunday. A New England tradition for sure. (Just like spaghetti on Wednesday and fish on Fridays!) Cannot find B&M Brown Bread anywhere in California or Hawaii, so will make it myself!”
Very much a New England bread that is a well-kept secret. Difficult to find anywhere outside of the region, mention it to locals and you will see a deep glow in their eyes.
Boston brown bread has ancestors in the traditional "thirded" breads, in which thrifty housewives would stretch out their supply of costly wheat flour by substituting oats and/or rye for some of the wheat. In the New World, Indian meal took the place of oats. I wrote about it here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19HmYtJqY4iiSRTvS8scWC4RvaAvO1rin5SW98z9PyCE/edit?usp=drivesdk
Love deep dives on food! So fascinating. Nice photography btw.