Don't mess with Mainers.

We're an ornery bunch up here, especially if you mess with our traditions. As long as I've been alive, and every member of my family before, Saturday night is Bean Night in Maine. It just is. And at 99.9% of those meals, you're going to find brown bread on the table. My mother-in-law makes a fantastic homemade brown bread.

Baked beans in tomato sauce, in a brown pot.
robynmac
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Perhaps even better than store-bought. But there are tons of Mainers that consider B&M brown bread to be the staple of Maine Bean Night culture. Now, if you're a tourist, there's a good chance you don't know what we're talking about. But in short, it's a dense molasses bread that you bake in an old tin can. It's sweet, moist, and super tasty.

Amazon.com
Amazon.com
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But, has our beloved B&M brown bread changed since they left Maine?

Lots of folks have begun to wonder on social media. I've seen it posed on Reddit, on Facebook, etc... But there are folks who swear that the taste just isn't the same since B&M left Portland a while back. Same for the beans. A lot of folks are wondering if they'll ever get the old recipe just right.

My guess for both of these things, is new equipment. Think about it... All the current manufacturing equipment is probably brand new. I gotta believe that anything that's been made in the same pots and pans for decades, no matter how clean they are, will take on a certain flavor profile. Kinda like a good cast-iron skillet.

Photo by Thomas Park on Unsplash
Photo by Thomas Park on Unsplash
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So maybe all we need is patience. Or, we could all make our own brown bread. It's not any harder than anything else. But if you like to buy it, you may not be as excited by it as you used to be. I'll cross my fingers for you. And if you can't find it in a store... there's always Amazon...

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