The Easiest Brown Bread in a Can Recipe

Brown bread is a New England classic. Made with a combination of three flours (corn, wheat, and rye) plus buttermilk and molasses, brown bread is delicious served warm with butter or as part of a classic Saturday night Franks & Beans Supper. Making homemade brown bread in a can has traditionally required hours of steaming, and while there’s definitely a more convenient way to get your brown bread fix (see B&M Brown Bread in a Can), sometimes you just have to get out the measuring cups and mixing bowl.

The perfect solution? Mini loaves of brown bread, baked in Mason jars.

For inspiration, I turned to our recipe for Concord Brown Bread Muffins, which are moist and flavorful without needing a drop of simmering water. They taste right, but look (as they should) like muffins, and not brown bread, which should be tall and cylindrical. The solution, it seemed, was simply a taller baking vessel.

The batter for this brown bread recipe comes together the old-fashioned way — whisking together the dry ingredients and then slowly folding them into the wet ingredients.

But then, instead of filling an empty coffee can or muffin cups, pour the batter into clean, greased Mason jars, filling them up about halfway. Arrange the jars on a baking sheet, and pop the sheet into the oven.

About 35 minutes later (for pint jars), you’ve got tall, perfectly domed loaves of fragrant, sweet, slightly gritty brown bread. All that’s missing is the butter…and (for some of you) the baked beans and hot dogs.

Are you a fan of brown bread? Now that you have our easy brown bread in a can recipe (aka, brown bread in a Mason jar), what’s to stop you from making a batch yourself?

This post was first published in 2016 and has been updated. 

GET THE RECIPE:
Brown Bread in a Jar Recipe