Baked Beans and Brown Bread

It’s Friday and I’m thinking about food. Many years ago when my family went to New England for summer vacations, we would have baked beans, and brown bread out of a can, for Saturday night dinner. I used to wonder why this wasn’t the Friday night meal since I didn’t see any meat involved. At the time no-one ever explained it to my satisfaction. We had this meal as a call back to my father’s heritage of growing up in Massachusetts. My mother didn’t serve baked beans at other times. Of course I have met baked beans since then at potlucks and parties but I tend to take a tablespoonful and move on. I know exactly what baked beans taste like but, somehow, I could never figure out if I liked them or not. I have occasionally bought cans but they usually end up at the Food Pantry, Sunday morning. (Why I would buy a can of food without knowing how I was going to use it is a totally different discussion.)

Last week one of my children was visiting, went to a party, and brought home some leftovers, including “baked beans.” Visual inspection revealed that there were at least three different kinds of beans present. The flavor definitely involved a can of baked beans, but besides the extra bean varieties, the casserole clearly had been jumped up with bacon and pork and other items. It was delicious. And it is a well-known variant according to the internet.

There are loads of recipes for “Baked Beans,” involving three different beans. Some start from scratch. Some use cans of different kinds of beans, including a can of — baked beans. I know an amazing cook, who would start from scratch, but I think I’m just going to try the three can variation. https://www.bushbeans.com/en_US/bean-recipes/baked-beans-casserole-with-bacon I bought some special bacon and I have some pork I could add at the end. And of course, I understand why this isn’t a Friday meal. I would guess that the baked beans back in my childhood had all been cooked with some kind of pork.

All this contemplation of baked beans got me wondering about that brown bread we also ate. I remember liking it tremendously as a kid, and thinking I’d be happy to eat it more often. Looking back I can just imagine what my mother thought of buying two cans of bread vs a ten pound sack of flour that she would use to make ten loaves of bread. As in, That’s Not Happening (except on vacation). But I did find a bunch of recipes.

My favorite (to read about) is the Fanny Farmer version from 1890. It involves rye flour, corn meal, and graham flour along with, relatively speaking, a lot of molasses, salt, and buttermilk. (My memory includes raisins but I can start without them.) The dough is poured into any one of various containers but “a five-pound lard pail answers the purpose.” I’ll bet it would — if I had a five pound lard pail. The bread dough is steamed for three and a half hours. It is important that the water in the steamer doesn’t run Out, says the recipe. I’ll just bet again. https://www.tastinghistory.com/recipes/bostonbrownbread

Anyway, I’m going to give brown bread a try IF I can figure out how to cook the dough in a can that won’t cut me up. Or poison me. And IF I can figure out a pot that can allow water partly up the sides of the can but not all the way. The recipe given in Tasting History recommends cleaning a 15 ounce can from vegetables or tomato sauce or something else. Uh, huh. I know about the sharp edges involved.

We Will See.