You can't always get what you want...

 fig. a:  Old Nova Scotia

A few weeks I got caught up in a small-scale research project of sorts.

A friend of mine, S., was on the lookout for Nova Scotia-style brown bread.  S. hails from New Scotland, and she had a hankering for a taste from home.  She thought there must be somewhere in Montreal that baked or offered Maritimes-style brown bread, but I wasn't so sure.  After all, it's nearly impossible to get loaves that have deep roots in Montreal--like a true caraway rye--let alone loaves from beyond Quebec, and especially loaves from other provinces.

Now, at first I thought she had something along the lines of Boston brown bread in mind.  S. had mentioned molasses and I was fairly certain that steamed brown bread could be found in the Maritimes, too.  I was right about that,* but it turned out she had a more conventional baked bread in mind, one that came topped with rolled oats.

All of a sudden, I could picture it.  This Maritimes-style brown bread was definitely something I'd seen in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island a few years ago.  In fact, I was convinced I'd tasted it, too.  And I was pretty sure I could smell its sweet, homey aroma.

Now, as it turns out, I'd been on something of a molasses kick in my bread baking.  For a few months, a good percentage of the loaves I'd made on my weekly adventures in baking were either corn rye or Danish rye loaves, both of which featured the lovely rounded flavours of molasses.  So I decided to take up the quest for Nova Scotia-style brown bread as a challenge, and I told S. I was doing so.  My only caveat was that, no matter what I discovered, I was going to develop a sourdough version of brown bread.

Now, that might sound a little ungenerous, but I was fairly certain that at some point in the past, sometime before the advent of industrialized yeast, Nova Scotia brown bread had been made with sourdough starter.  S. is a historian--I was hoping she'd understand.

When I began to research Nova Scotia brown bread online, I became even more set in my ways.  It might just have been the quality of the photographs in question, but I wasn't crazy about the kinds of recipes I was finding--or the way the results of those recipes looked.

Well, it turns out I was wrong, or, at least, the predominant method for baking Nova Scotia brown bread was altogether different from what I'd imagined.  Apparently, traditional bread baking in the Maritimes had been accomplished with homemade yeast.

As Marie Nightingale explains in our copy of Out of Old Nova Scotia Kitchens:

For the wise mother who still insists that home-made bread is a necessity for her family's health and enjoyment, bread-making is an easy task as compared to that of earlier days.  Today we begin with prepared yeast, either in cake or granular form, but in the old days the yeast had first to be made before thought could be given to making bread.

Making the yeast starter from hops and potatoes was a process that involved days, so care had to be taken to keep a supply always on hand.  Kept tightly corked in stone jars and stored in a cool place, the yeast would stay sweet and fresh for a couple of months.

As intrigued as I was by the idea of making homemade yeast, I had a sourdough starter on hand, and it was definitely sweet and fresh, so I stuck to my plan.  And, basically, I used this project as an excuse to overhaul my whole wheat bread recipe, which I'd always found a little ascetic.

This is what I came up with:

 fig. b:  is for brown & bread

AEB Brown Bread 

200 grams leaven (20%) 

630 grams water (80º F, ideally) + an additional 50 grams of warm water (68%) 

100 grams fancy molasses (10%) 

[total hydration:  780 grams (78%), including the molasses] 

600 grams whole wheat bread flour (60%) 

400 grams AP flour (40%) 

[total flour:  1 kg (100%)] 

20 grams kosher salt (2%) 

rolled oats (as needed)

Notes:  Top each loaf with untoasted rolled oats before the final rise.  I don't bother slashing my loaves before I bake them, as the topping of rolled oats makes this too difficult.  I just let these loaves go freeform.

 fig. c:  rolled oats

I've mentioned this before, but my sourdough method is borrowed directly from Chad Robertson's from Tartine Bread.  For optimum results, you should follow his directions closely.  Here, I'm just providing the measurements (in weight) and baker's percentages that you need to make two large loaves (roughly 2 pounds each).

Anyway, I was pretty thrilled with the results.

 fig. d:  sliced bread

In fact, this brown bread instantly became our house favourite, a loaf that made particularly great sandwiches, not to mention a loaf that had us bolting out of bed in the morning (well, at least it had me bolting out of bed in the morning) to make toasts with only butter on them.  Nothing else is needed.  Except maybe a soft-boiled egg.

 fig. e:  e is for egg

Or possibly the occasional drizzle of honey, but somehow that usually seems like gilding the lily to me.

S. liked it, too.  Because, of course, as soon as I tested it, I invited S. and J. over for dinner and baked her her very own loaf.  Nova Scotian verdict:  "super tasty!"

I took that to mean success.  But mostly I saw it as another example of how you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, well, you just might find you get what you need.  We certainly did.

aj

* Steamed Brown Bread shows up sixth in Out of Old Nova Scotia Kitchens' section on Breads, after Anadama Bread, Rolled Oats Bread (one of the inspirations here), French Bread, Salt Rising Bread, and Sally Lunns.

Relatively Quick Breads 2: Boston Brown Bread

A few days later, I was rereading John Thorne's wonderful chapter on baked beans from Serious Pig for the umpteenth time, when I suddenly realized that I'd never done anything other than gloss over his brief section on Boston Brown Bread that appears roughly midway through the chapter. I'd read the beginning of the chapter, of course, and the last several pages of the chapter--"A Note On Maine Bean Types," "First Find Your Bean Pot," and "Bean Hole Beans" (Thorne is nothing if not thorough)--but, inexplicably, I'd always just skipped over the section on Boston Brown Bread. Not this time, though. This time I read the Boston Brown Bread section closely and I could hardly believe what I was reading. The combination is an unlikely one, and Thorne draws attention to this: "At first, theirs seems a strange alliance. Brown bread, a chocolate-colored, raisin-studded soda bread made of whole wheat, rye, and "injun" [corn meal] is just as soft, dense, and carbohydrate-heavy as baked beans themselves--and yet, somehow, the two manage to paly off, even enhance, each other's goodness." But what really caught me by surprise was that Boston Brown Bread is traditionally a steamed bread--and one that's most commonly steamed in a coffee can.

fig. a: clean, empty coffee can

Like everyone and their brother, I knew about Boston Baked Beans. Like a lot of people, I'd heard of Boston Brown Bread. But somehow I never got the message that Boston Brown Bread gets steamed on the stovetop (in a can!) while your pot of Boston Baked Beans bakes in the oven. Talk about "Yankee ingenuity."

I'd already decided that I needed to make Boston Brown Bread that very night--after all, my Down East Baked Beans were baking in the oven and they still had a good 3-4 hours to go--but when Michelle got home I asked her what she knew about Boston Brown Bread. "What do I know about Boston Brown Bread?," she asked. "I've been wanting to make it since I was a kid, that's what." Turns out that at roughly the same age that I was obsessing over Johnny Cake down south of the border, Michelle was north of the border, dreaming of Boston Brown Bread. When I told her I was thinking of making it that very night, she got pretty excited. I had no problem convincing her to run off to the health food store for rye flour while I went to the supermarket in search of molasses, buttermilk, and a 1-pound coffee can.

15 minutes later we reconvened and Michelle started to assemble the dough while I got to work on the coleslaw (the third part of Thorne's baked beans trinity).

Boston Brown Bread

1/2 cup rye flour
1/2 cup cornmeal, preferably white flint
1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
6 tbsp fancy molasses (not blackstrap)
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup raisins or dried currants
butter for greasing a 1-pound coffee can

About 2 1/2 hours before your baked beans will be ready, bring a large kettle of water to a boil. In a mixing bowl, stir together the rye flour, cornmeal, whole-wheat flour, baking soda, and salt until well mixed. Pour in the molasses and buttermilk, and work into a smooth batter. Fold in the raisins or dried currants [raisins are traditional, but Thorne prefers currants]. Carefully butter the inside of your empty, clean 1-pound coffee can (a 14-oz can will do). Pour in the batter and cover the can with a doubled piece of aluminum foil. Press this down so that it stretches tightly across the top and reaches partially down the sides, and secure it in place with a sturdy rubber band.

Put a small wire rack (if available) on the bottom of a deep pot. Set the filled coffee can on the rack or simply set it on the bottom of the pot. Pour the boiling water around the can

fig. b: adding the boiling water to the pot

until it reaches a little more than halfway up the sides. Bring the water back up to a murmuring simmer, cover the pot, and gently steam the bread for 2 hours, or until a straw inserted in the middle of the bread comes out clean. Remove, set on a cake rack, and let cool until the beans are ready to serve, then unmould the bread and serve warm. Brown bread is traditionally cut with a string, but dental floss works well too.

fig. c: still life with Boston Brown Bread, a coffee can, and dental floss

Serve buttered, alongside--or, if you prefer, under--the baked beans.

Makes 1 loaf of delicious Boston Brown Bread.

Total time: about 2 1/2 hours.

John Thorne has never let us down. Fresh, hot Boston Brown Bread with butter + baked beans was a revelation. I'd always been partial to sourdough with my baked beans previously, but now it's going to be hard to go back. And Boston Brown Bread is much more than just a sidekick to your baked beans--it makes for an ideal loaf of morning bread too. Again, all you need to do is toast it and add butter, the bread does the rest.

With a cooking time of 2 hours, Boston Brown Bread can hardly be accused of being the quickest quick bread, but it's one of the easiest, most satisfying bread recipes you'll ever find, and it's hard for me to imagine a better recipe to get kids interested in cooking. Think about it: piping-hot homemade bread in only 2 1/2 hours. Plus, when was the last time you steamed a loaf of bread? In a coffee can, no less.

aj