Watching one of those stupid cook-off competitions on the telly recently, one of the contestants had to incorporate ‘canned bread’ into her menu. She wasn’t terribly thrilled with the idea (ended up making French toast IIRC) but it got me thinking, why on earth would you manufacture BREAD IN A CAN?
Also, tinned pumpkin for making pumpkin pie is another thing that perplexes me.
Can anyone shed some light on these culinary curiosities?
The AV Club did a taste test of canned (raisin) bread:
http://www.avclub.com/article/taste-test-canned-bread-canned-cheese-pickled-saus-2495
It’s the same purpose in both cases: To preserve it. I’m not sure why you would need to preserve bread instead of just buying it every week or two, short of something like stocking a bomb shelter, but it makes plenty of sense for pumpkins which would otherwise only be available in the fall.
Boston Brown Bread is traditionally cooked in a can.
I’ve never had a home made version but the supermarket stuff is pretty good.
I’ve tried it before, when I found it at a “Big Lots” style overstock store. It is not dissimilar to those dense cellophane-wrapped bricks of fruitcake that you can buy.
Wow, I haven’t seen this stuff since the '60s. My mother used to serve it (the storebought kind) as a side dish with dinner. It was very moist and sweet.
At one time home made bread making had pretty well fallen out of favor. In the 60’s to 70’s all most people wanted was the white wonder bread. A bakery named Brother Juniper’s Bakery started having classes in bread baking. Supposedly it was kind of a hippy type movement. Back to nature and all that. The author of the book about that bakery said she held classes and they used coffee cans because they worked and were cheap.
I don’t know if this is the type of canned bread the OP was asking about or not. Someplace here I think I have that cookbook. If you are interested I’ll see if I can find it.
I’ll take a shot at the canned pumpkin vs fresh pumpkin. On a cooking show there is usually a time limit, it could be that cooking the pumpkin and then making bread or a pie or whatever would simply take too long.
It’s simple to make at home, and it tastes pretty much like the bread in the can, heavy, moist and slightly sweet. You can slice it thin and make round cream cheese sandwiches. Brown bread and baked beans just go together, making a fairly filling no-meat meal.
As for canned pumpkin, there is canned pumpkin for the same reason there is canned tuna, milk in a carton, and wrapped sticks of butter: we don’t have time or opportunity to go fishing and then processing a tuna, or milk a cow, or churn our own butter. How else are you supposed to make a pumpkin thing without opening a can? (yes,yes, one can buy a pumpkin, cut it up, and cook it down, best pie I ever made was using a sugar baby pumpkin I grew myself).
My mother used to occasionally make it – we had close family friends whose father/husband was chronically ill, and it was one of the only things he’d eat, but only if it was homemade. I remember her saving cans of various sizes which she kept in a box in our pantry.
It’s molasses bread, basically, traditionally made with raisins and a bit of cornmeal for texture. The batter is poured into the cans, the cans covered with parchment which is tied down, and placed in a gentle water bath as if you were making steamed English pudding.
It’s very old fashioned and, right now, out of vogue unless you’re a certain age. Kind of the same deal with hermits.
Baking (for example) pumpkin bread in cans went out when coffee cans turned to plastic. Hard to bake in those.
You can get just about anything in a can. Even a cheeseburger. Not just the patty. Literally, a cheeseburger in a can.
That’s why McDonald’s can serve them up so quickly!
Brown bread is a staple in New England. I doubt there are many New Englanders who didn’t grow up with beans, hot dogs and brown bread as a weekly supper. It’s delicious, and when I see it in stores (I’ve moved away, sadly), I snap it up.
It’s not canned for preservation, by the way. It’s a steamed bread that is made in the can. It’s a sort of cousin to suet puddings/plum pudding, which makes sense, since NE was originally populated by people from the UK. (Well, “originally” by Native Americans, but you know what I mean.)
I’ve seen bread recipes using a tinned can, too. For a while exotic bread was baked in clay flowerpots (clean new ones!) because if you watered them before, the process during baking would be natural with the clay slowly releasing the water compared to a tin can. (similiar to using a taijine for cooking veggies/meat Tajine - Wikipedia )
In Addition, using a nice clean clay pot, you have a ready-made gift. If necessary, tie a ribbon round, but fresh home-baked bread as a gift, esp. for traditional occasions like house openings, with ist own Container, is nice.
I could see advantages to getting “regular” bread, such as might be used for sandwiches, in a can. It won’t get crushed in the grocery sack, picnic basket, etc.; and it can easily be resealed to prevent drying out.
Canned pumpkin is exactly as good as making it yourself, with less work. It’s literally plain, unseasoned pumpkin in a can. Now canned pumpkin pie filling is a whole different, unnecessary and inferior story.
Really? Maybe this is regional (pumpkins don’t grown down here in SE Louisiana) … but canned pumpkin is decisively the default for anyone making pumpkin pie locally.
In the fall, pumpkins are imported** to our local groceries for making jack o’lanterns and other décor. Every so often, people do empty out a pumpkin, pick the seeds out, and use the resulting pulp to make pie. But it’s a lot of trouble, and I think the canned stuff actually makes a better pie (sacrilege!). Or at the very least, a more familiar pie.
**also imported for our local faux “pumpkin patches” and such.
Add hot dogs and it is Saturday night in my childhood.
