It’s bread, but in a can…
If you haven’t eaten a can of bread, you haven’t lived. You just open both ends and push out a loaf. It feels awfully novel for a 100-year-old idea.
But this brown bread itself (sans can) came about much earlier. Remember those British colonists we talked about in our last article? The ones who made all those beans? Well, they also needed bread. So they tried to grow their grain of choice, which was wheat. But the poor soil in New England made that difficult. In the end, they fell back on the tradition of mixed-grain loaves, which had been made by the lower classes in Europe for ages. They used a mixture of wheat, rye, and a new-to-them grain: cornmeal. Then they added molasses, because they were already becoming American, and Americans like sweet foods.
The bread was originally baked, but some folks liked to prepare it as a steamed pudding. Which lead to a steamed loaf. Which lead to the steamed-in-a-can bread emerging in the 1920s. And the tradition of a Saturday evening supper of brown bread, baked beans, and hotdogs.
All history aside. It’s a can of bread! If you haven’t had one, it’s worth a try.