Brown Bread

Boston brown bread — a dark, dense, moist bread made from rye flour, cornmeal, whole wheat flour, molasses, and buttermilk, steamed (not baked) in a covered mould or a tin can for 2-3 hours — is the traditional accompaniment to Boston baked beans and one of the most unusual breads in American cooking. The steaming technique produces a bread with no crust — uniformly moist, dense, and dark throughout, with a flavour dominated by the molasses and the earthiness of the rye and cornmeal. The bread's origins are Puritan: steaming required less fuel than baking (important in a New England winter), and the grain combination (rye, corn, wheat) used the three grains most available in colonial New England. The practice of steaming in a tin can — a 1-pound coffee can, greased and filled two-thirds full — became the standard home method and persists today.

A cylindrical, dark brown bread — the shape of the can or mould it was steamed in — with a uniform, moist, cakelike crumb, no crust, and a deep molasses-rye-corn flavour. When sliced into rounds and served alongside baked beans, the bread is slightly sweet, earthy, and dense enough to absorb the bean sauce without falling apart.

Baked beans (AM2-04). Always. The brown bread absorbs the bean sauce and the combination of the molasses-rye-corn bread with the molasses-pork-beans is a flavour loop: the same sweetness and earthiness reinforced from two directions.