What’s the easiest brown bread in a can recipe? The one that’s actually brown bread in a jar! Made with cornmeal, wheat, and rye flours, plus buttermilk and molasses, this brown bread in a jar recipe is the easy way to enjoy a mini Boston classic.
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.
Mixing the brown bread batter. Photo Credit : Aimee Seavey
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.
Filling the jars of brown bread batter. Photo Credit : Aimee Seavey
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.
Brown Bread in a Can Recipe Photo Credit : Aimee Seavey
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.
Aimee Tucker is Yankee Magazine’s Home Editor and the Senior Digital Editor of NewEngland.com. A lifelong New Englander and Yankee contributor since 2010, Aimee has written columns devoted to history, foliage, retro food, and architecture, and regularly shares her experiences in New England travel, home, and gardening. Her most memorable Yankee experiences to date include meeting Stephen King, singing along to a James Taylor Fourth of July concert at Tanglewood, and taking to the skies in the Hood blimp for an open-air tour of the Massachusetts coastline.
