How to Make Boston Brown Bread in the Crock Pot

I've been experimenting with Crock Pot bread baking these last few weeks and have had lots of fun adapting some of my recipes for crockery cooking. While a Crock Pot seems like the last appliance a person would use for baking, it really is a fantastic tool for preparing steamed breads. My latest try at crockery bread making was for Boston Brown Bread.

Boston Brown Bread has a unique history that stretches back to Colonial America. In those days, settlers had to make bread from limited resources. Since they had more cornmeal and rye than wheat flour, New Englanders developed a bread recipe that combined all three. This tasty blend of flours, milk, and molasses was poured into a cylinder shaped mold and steamed in a kettle in the fireplace.

I recently ran across a tasty recipe for Boston Brown Bread in my 1928 "Any One Can Bake" cookbook, published by the Royal Baking Powder company. Instead of steaming this bread in a kettle, I used the Crock Pot to create this mouth watering Colonial Bread.

ingredients and instructions

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup rye or oat flour (oat flour can be make by running whole oats through a blender)
5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup dark molasses
1 1/2 c milk
Boiling water 1-2 cups (depending on size of Crock Pot)

Combine dry ingredients, mix thoroughly. Pour molasses into milk, add to dry ingredients. Beat thoroughly and pour into well greased mold, 2/3 full. Cover. Turn Crock Pot to low setting. Pour the boiling water into crock to a depth of 1 1/2 inches. Set mold inside of Crock Pot on top of a small rack to keep it up out of the water. Cover, and steam three and one-half hour. Remove lids and bake until dry, about 15 additional minutes.

Modifications for cooking in a Crock Pot

In Colonial Days, a cylinder shaped mold was used to bake these tasty breads. These days, the common way to bake Boston Brown Bread is in a large can, such as the large sized baked bean cans found at the store. If a large can won't fit in your Crock Pot, try three smaller cans instead. For a lid, aluminum foil held in place with rubber bands will work.

Since I didn't have a clean can lying around my home, I had to do a little improvising to make my batch of Boston Brown Bread. What worked as a decent substitute was the aluminum insert of my 1 quart rice cooker. To serve, I quartered the bread and then sliced them into wedges crosswise.

For fans of Boston Brown Breads, this simple recipe is an easy way to make this delicious bread with a minimum of fuss. It's also quite low in cost to prepare with the total cost of ingredients coming to about $1.30.

sources:
http://www.wisegeek.com/m/what-is-boston-brown-bread.htm