B&M Canned Bread, 08-24-01
Bread in a can?
It runs counter to everything the United States is supposed to be all about.
That is to say: Despite our almost total dependence on artificial, preserved, pre-fabricated, heavily medicated and almost totally unnatural foods, we like to think of ourselves as health-conscious and sensible. Thus, supermarkets bend over backwards to make their products look like they just fell off an old farmer's rustic wooden wagon, when they were actually just shat out of colossal industrial molds.
Bread in a can does not appear natural; it's a throwback to an era in American history when they canned whole chickens. In fact, B&M's "New England Style Brown Bread (Plain)" seems to be the holdover of some dark chapter in American military history. The consumer can easily imagine Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders sullenly popping open cans of newfangled B&M canned bread after yet another a pitched battle with Spanish irregulars.
 |
|
|
Appearances can be deceiving. Despite its downright creepy appearance, B&M canned bread is actually about as natural as anything out there; it's a combination of water, whole wheat flour, molasses, dextrose, rye flour, whey, corn meal, baking soda, buttermilk, salt and corn oil. Compare that to your favorite snack chip.
Wholesome or not, the stuff is strange. The smooth brown cylinder that emerges from the can could easily be rolled down hills at one's enemies. It's hard to keep on a plate unless you let it sit vertically, at which point the bread looks like a sinister wizard's tower, glowering with malicious intent.
|
|
|
B&M promotes its products as having "The Flavor of Home®." But the brown, breadlike column did not, in fact, have such a flavor. My home was a place typically well-stocked with perfectly normal loaves of Kohl's egg bread, which contained absolutely no molasses whatsoever.
The same can't be said for B&M's weird offering, which tastes like its dough is soaked in a molasses bath before baking. It's not terrible, but it's not undeniably good, and you definitely wouldn't want to make a sandwich out of it.
Three unambiguously positive things can be said about the bread, however.
1. It's really moist. You could easily package pumpkin or zucchini bread in a can, and get a nice moist cylinder of dessert bread out of the deal.
2. It's diverting. A recent brunch degenerated into unstructured play time when the B&M bread appeared. By using toothpicks and blueberries, guests used B&M bread to blaze new trails through the world of their imaginations.
It would be cruel — and inaccurate — to describe B&M canned bread as a failure. The moistness and weird factor, by themselves, make it worth $1.75. And while it's probably not destined to become a regular guest in my pantry, it will be hard see B&M canned bread in a supermarket without giving a little nod of respect and thinking: "Hey, there's that canned bread. That stuff's all right."
