Boston brown bread – aka “box bread” – is soft and dense, a little spicy and a little sweet. This historic New England colonial bread is still eaten sliced and fried with butter today, therefore served with cooked beans and hot dogs. It is traditionally done with wheat flour, rye and corn; hydrated by lacticello; You sweeten with molasses; and leavened with sodium bicarbonate. East, currant or even dry blueberries are optional. I had heard of this bread and I knew it was similar to Anadama’s bread (corn and molasses), but only recently did I dive into its history and recipes. I focused on the recipe in Maggie Glezer’s book Artisan crafts through America (2000)Which is from René Becker from the hi-rise bread company in Cambridge, in Massachusetts. The recipe I created uses hi-rise flour relationships, but otherwise it goes out for the script, gradually gradually graduating with natural leavening appetizer and cooking in a pan rather than a can of coffee. The natural leavening fermentation of natural leavening offers quite tang that the milk has more lacticello and attempting the pan with an aluminum sheet for most of the cooking guarantees a very soft and almost more forwarded crust and crusts. Finally, I reduced the molasses for less sweetness, which translates into a clearer bread that perhaps should be called beige bread.
The recipe is downsized for an average use of the USA 9 x 5 x 2.75 inches. If you want to use a pan and a bus lid, multiply the ingredients by 1.2 for the small coach pan and 1.7 for the large coach pan.
Almost steamed and soft bread
Here is just a little of the story of this bread (and insulting) that I learned as I work on this recipe that I cannot resist sharing.
Boston’s brown bread has its origins in the first colonial period of the United States when the settlers in New England were struggling to grow the wheat they had brought from Europe. The Native American presented them to the cultivation of corn, which together with the rye wheat, had made better. By combining these cereals, the Puritans started making a bread similar to a pudding. On Saturdays, they cooked the batter for hours in a mold in a kettle above the hearth and also cooked beans. This combination was therefore eaten throughout the weekend so that the Puritans could observe the religious rule not to cook on Sunday. Over time, the molasses, the pre-cure of rum and part of the trade of transatlantic triangular slaves, has been included in the recipe. At the beginning of the 1800s, the consumption of food was invented* which in the end led to the custom of cooking brown bread in the coffee boxes. Boxing bread reached mass production in 1928, when the company of preserves B&M in Portland, in Maine, began to sell to accompany the boxes to the box in box that had introduced the previous year.
*The invention of the food preserves by a French chef, Nicolas Appert, was the result of a race announced by the French government in 1795 for the best invention of food conservation and the impulse behind the competition was to better feed the soldiers on the multiple military fronts of France.
Flins in the central bowl, clockwise from above: corn, red FIFE wheat, rye
Boston natural baking brown bread
Here is a Boston Brown Broad’s Lievite Foca version, a New England colonial classic with rye flour, corn and wheat. This variation is cooked in a pan and the consistency is very tender and humid. Have fun with baked beans, spread with butter or with a piece of sharp cherdar.
Cooking time
1 hour, 20 minutes
Total time
1 hour, 50 minutes
Ingredients
Baker’s percentages
- 32% of flour of all the purpose or bread
- 32% of full rye flour
- 21% of whole wheat flour
- 15% of corn flour
- 1% salt
- 21% of natural leavening start
- 69% of milk
- Molasses of 15%
Instructions
- This bread has a quick and simple mixing, a long first increase and a moderate final test. Under the environmental temperature of 70 ° F (or using cold milk), you can let the dough increase unattended during the night. The final test range for 2-4 hours, always depending on the environmental temperature.
- Beat the four flours together and gets in a large bowl. Add the milk, the natural leavening appetizer, the molasses and the optional dried fruit. Mix until carefully combined. The dough will have a consistency as a dense cement. Scroll the upper part with a wet spatula and note the level on the bowl or the bucket of pasta if you have transferred it.
- Cover and let the dough increase until it doubled the size. Depending on the environmental temperatures and milk, this may take 6-12 hours. With milk at 85 ° F and kitchen temperatures under 70 ° F, an increase during the night should be solved well.
- Browse a medium -sized pan (9x5x2.75 inches).
- The fermented dough out of the bowl is scraped on a floured work surface.
- Flatten the dough in a rectangle about 8 inches wide: this is the side from which the dough rolls. The length can vary, but about 12 inches is fine.
- Roll the dough in a pipe along the short edge, so the tube is about 8 inches long.
- Place the seam of the pipe down in the pan.
- Cover and let the dough rises again until it is based only on the edge of the pan. This should take 2-4 hours, depending on the room temperature. In a set of box at 80 ° F, my dough needed just under 2 hours.
- Preheated the oven at 325 ° F.
- Brush the dough with the milk and form a curtain for the salary pan by wrapping an aluminum sheet around the bottom of the pan to shape it, then remove and place the sheet on the top of the pan, sealing the edges (see photo gallery).
- Cook for 1 hour 20 minutes (80 minutes) or until the internal temperature is greater than 190 ° F. at over 60 minutes, it is possible to remove the curtain to use a probe thermometer and check the temperature. Rail the bread in a vague way if you have to continue cooking.
- Once the target internal temperature is reached, remove the bread from the oven and let it cool from the pan for at least 2 hours before cutting.
