Boston Brown Bread

Boston Brown Bread is an old fashioned ‘quick bread’. It comes from Boston in Massachusetts and is a quick bread. This bread has been popular for many years now. It is made with a combination of rye flour, wholemeal(wholewheat) flour and cornmeal. It also contains molasses which imparts a rich and deep flavour profile to a dense loaf. Black Treacle can be used instead of molasses since it has the same characteristics. It is considered a quick bread since there is no yeast in the loaf. Indeed, the use of rye flour and cornflour wouldn’t necessarily work well with a yeasted dough.

The loaf is dense in texture and has such a rich flavour. From what I have read this bread was traditionally steamed in a coffee can. That gave a cylindrical loaf, which was then sliced into neat little rounds. These days, in the absence of those coffee cans, a 28 ounce(800g) can which is food safe can be used instead.

However such cans are not easily obtained in the UK, so I decided to make mine in a 1lb loaf pan. I checked my pan by filling it with water, which weighed 840g. That meant that it would be large enough to make the loaf.

Steamed

As I mentioned, above, the bread is usually steamed though I have seen some recipes that will bake it in a loaf pan. I decided to stick to the traditional method of steaming. Of course using a loaf pan meant that I wouldn’t have the traditional round slices of bread. But that really doesn’t matter at all.

Steaming the bread does take a while, as you would expect. The water level needs to be checked from time to time too, so more boiling water can be added if necessary. But the steaming works so well giving a lovely dense and moist bread.

Often some raisins are added into the bread mixture. That provides just a little fruity sweetness to the bread. Although molasses comes from the process of refining sugar, and does have a little sweetness, the flavour profile varies somewhat depending on which type you use. For my bread I used blackstrap molasses which is less sweet and has a robust flavour with a slight bitterness. This works very well for Boston Brown Bread.

I have read that Boston Brown Bread is often served with baked beans. However, in my experience, baked beans in the USA are very different to those in the UK. In the USA they seem to be sweeter and stickier in a barbecue type sauce, as opposed to the looser tomato based sauce for UK baked beans. So I decided not to serve mine with baked beans at all. Rather, I decided to try the bread with butter and then with some cheese too.

The recipe is actually very simple and can be mixed and ready to steam in less than 15 minutes.

The loaf pan

As I mentioned I used a 1lb loaf pan, the dimension of which are 7 1/4 inches in length, 3 1/2 inches in width and 2 1/2 inches deep. That is the perfect size for this recipe.

However since many people will have a 2lb loaf pan I should mention that you can simply double the recipe and it will work in that size of pan. It may be, in those circumstances, that the steaming will need to be extended. But it should be checked after 2 hours and if a skewer test comes out clean it will be done.

My Loaf

Since I had never had this bread before I did a test before I made the video. The test worked so well, giving me a perfectly formed loaf. The texture was dense and the flavour was rich. I tested the loaf after about 1 hour and 55 minutes and it was fully cooked.

So I knew from experience that the one I made for this recipe and video would work perfectly.

I can only report on the flavour of my test version, since my sister was keen to have this particular one. The loaf slices so well, once cooled, and was perfect for buttering. I enjoyed it just like that, and then I also tried it with some thinly sliced cheese and it was great too. I am sure it would go well with so many things.

Another lovely recipe using molasses, or black treacle, is Black Treacle/Molasses Cookies.