Boston Brown Bread

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INGREDIENTS

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1 tablespoon butter

¼ teaspoon allspice

¼ teaspoon baking powder

¾ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

⅔ cup yellow cornmeal

¾ cup rye flour

½ cup whole wheat flour

½ cup raisins (optional)

1¼ cups buttermilk

½ cup molasses

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

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SPECIAL UTENSILS

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3 coffee cans (Use the 14.5 ounce size or as near as you can get.)

aluminum foil

kitchen twine

8″*13″ casserole dish

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Serves 8.  Takes 2 hours 45 minutes.

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PREPARATION

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Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease coffee cans with butter. Add allspice, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cornmeal, rye flour, wheat flour, and raisins (optional) to large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended..

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Boil water. Add buttermilk, molasses, and vanilla  to medium mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Add buttermilk into large bowl containing dry ingredients. Gently mix with spatula until just combined. This is the batter.

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Spoon batter equally into the 3 coffee cans. The batter should not reach higher than ⅔ the way up the cans. Cover the top of the cans will aluminum. Tie aluminum securely to the cans with kitchen twine. Add cans to casserole dish. Put casserole on middle rack in oven. Leave rack partway out. Pour boiling water into casserole dish until the water level is ¾ the way up to the top of the dish. (This method is safer and easier than lifting a dish full of boiling water into the oven.)

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Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour 20 minutes or until the top of a loaf will spring back when lightly touched or until loaves start to pull away from coffee cans. Remove aluminum foil. Place cans on cooling rack. Let cool for 1 hour. Turn over cans and tap the bottom to cans to get loaves to slide out. Goes well with cream cheese or baked beans.

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TIDBITS

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1) Boston Brown Bread is round. This is no accident.

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2) Bread Bread , however, is rectangular and made from bits and pieces of other bread loaves.

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3) Ned Ted Dredd bakes the most famous Bread Bread.

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4) It is said that Ned hails from Jamaica and wears dreadlocks. He’a also kinda scary. People dread seeing his dreads coming toward them.

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5) And that he is also a medical student at Kingston’s prestigious Kedd Medical University. It’s buildings are painted red to get its premeds used to the sight of blood.

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6) So, by all means visit Kedd Med Dread Dread Ned Ted Dredd’s Bread Bread Bakery.

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7) Any back in Boston, keen, lean, and mean Bob “Beantown” Beanstalk was drilling for samples deep into the Earth’s crust.

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8) For he was a, was a …

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9) Crustologist. You know the sort that drill into the crust looking for things that interest an amazingly small number of people.

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10) Anyway, “Beantown” was hopping–no, it’s spelled hoping–to find beetle exoskeletons in his core sample from one-mile down.

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11) For it’s well known that Ancient Egypt’s pharaohs and priests were absolutely gaga about beetles. They bred beetles to be pets. They held beetle relay races on religious holidays, They used rubies to fashion jewelry to look like beetles.

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12) Anyway, Beanstalk believed pharaohs dated back 10,000,009 years. Then if he could find similarly ancient beetles ‘neath the streets of Boston, then he would prove that Egypt was at one time adjacent to what is now New England.

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13) Incoming news! Just before press time, Boston Public Works just fired Bob Beanstalk. No reason was given.

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14) But just before getting the sack, and just before lunchtime, a hungry Bob looked at a brown, round soil sample. “Boy,” he said, “I am really hungry for some good, fresh bread.”

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15) As it so happened, Beanstalk’s wife  had filled his lunch pail with: butter, allspice, baking powder, salt, cornmeal, rye flour, whole wheat flour, raisins, buttermilk, molasses, vanilla extract, an 8″*13″ casserole dish, 3 round cans of coffee, aluminum foil, kitchen twine, six gallons of water, and two bunsen burners. After drinking all that coffee, frenetic Beantown’s synapses fired at an alarming rate and he soon created the first Boston Brown Bread out of the contents of his lunch pail.

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16) Now you know.

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– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

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