Yup. I said it. Bread made from canned beans – canned baked beans to be precise – and baked in a bundt pan.
A friend of ours picked up a few vintage cook book bargains for me at a garage sale a while back, including this l’il gem chock full o’ ways to get the most out of your bundt pan from Nordic Ware® – “The Bundt® People.”
That’s where I found this recipe for liquified baked beans, hot roll mix, and an egg.
Interesting – even with the ‘liquified baked beans’ bit.
And, according to those nice Bundt People: “delicious… moist… rich in protein… a perfect supper bread with a bowl of soup and a fruit salad”.
Well, it was 1973.
Still, something about the concept stuck with me and I knew I had to try it, so off I went in search of the stuff needed.
Egg? Check. 16 oz. can o’ beans? Check. 13-3/4 oz. package o’ hot roll mix? Tricky.
My local market had exactly one brand of hot roll mix, and it a hefty 16 ounces. Still, I figured it was close enough for blog work, so I’d forge on and see what happens.
To review:
INGREDIENTS
•1 (16 oz.) can pork and beans
•1/2 cup water
•1 pkg. (13-3/4 oz., if you can find it, but the 16 oz. package will work) hot roll mix
•1 egg
Empty the canned pork and beans into your blender container with the 1/2 cup water and puree until, yes, liquified.
Pour the bean liquid into a large, microwave safe, mixing bowl and ‘wave for a minute or so until warm (100º to 110º is perfect), then sprinkle with the packet of yeast from the hot roll mix and let sit for five minutes.
Lightly beat the egg and stir into the yeast and beans until well combined. Add in the flour packet from the roll mix – a nice wooden spoon works, but the dough hook of my stand mixer woulda worked better.
Either way, you’ll end up with a stiff, sticky ball o’ dough – kinda like this.
Cover with a clean kitchen towel and set aside in a warm spot to rise until the dough doubles – about 55 minutes worked a treat for me.
Stir the dough down and turn into a well greased bundt pan – I had some seasoned butter leftover from our last bit of grilled corn, so used the last of that. The dough is kinda sticky, so having butter smeared all over my hands helped in wrangling the dough into the pan, too – just a thought in case you were thinking cooking spray.
Heat your oven to 350º, drape that kitchen towel over the bundt pan, and set it aside for another twenty to twenty-five minutes until the dough has risen to fill the pan.
Kinda like this.
Bake for thirty to thirty-five minutes, until the bread tests done – I thumped mine a bit and then stuck it with a bamboo skewer – just to be sure.
Remove from the oven and turn out immediately onto a wire rack to cool.
I let mine rest for about five minutes before the heavenly aroma got to me and I sliced through the slightly crispy crust into this beautifully textured bread.
A schmear of chive cream cheese was a good thing. A schmear of jalapeño cream cheese would be a much more better thing.
Delicious and moist… and you can forget the bowl o’ soup and the fruit salad.