Coffee Tin Bread
In the old days we did not have Ikea and Walmart and cheap loaf tins. We used what was in the cupboard.
Bread can be baked in almost any container.
My Mum baked her bread in whatever she had handy – usually a cast iron or enamel meat loaf tin. Sometimes coffee tins and sometimes even terracotta plant pots.
Coffee cans (we call then tins in New Zealand) were collected by my mother and my grandmother – they had a myriad of uses: paint tins, nail tins (we straightened and sorted all old nails), button tins, scoops, etc and of course baking cans for puddings and bread.
The lids were metal and pried off with a key in a similar fashion to a sardine tin. More recently they have a plastic lid.
So, when John came home the other day with coffee in a can I was thrilled.
The metal inside the tin is not lined so it is fine for baking in. In fact if you can’t find a tin with coffee in it you can buy empty coffee cans on Amazon specifically for bread baking.
If, like me, you are buying coffee cans with coffee in them you will need to take off the lip at the top of the tin. Use a regular can opener. Make sure any metal filings are smoothed off.
The best thing about coffee can bread is the crust is soft and the slices fits perfectly into the toaster.
You can make four loaves with this recipe. (Though I have collected only two coffee tins so far).
This recipe will fill four coffee cans or two cans and one loaf tin.
You can use any of your favourite bread recipes. Below is the one I used for these loaves.
Ingredients
- 500g High Protein bread Flour
- 250g Red Fife Flour
- 250g Black Emmer Flour
- 780g water
- 1tblsp yeast
- 1 tblsp salt
Preparation
- Whisk or sift dry flour together
- Measure water and sprinkle the yeast on top – wait 3 minutes
- Add salt to dry ingredients
- Mix together until the dough begins to part from the bowl (less that a minute)
- Stretch and fold three times in the next hour (either in the bowl or on the counter)
- Divide in half.
- Shape and place one half in baking tin
- Divide the other half. Shape and place each quarter into greased coffee can.
- Rise about another hour. (Allow dough to rise to almost the top of the coffee can).
- Heat oven to 425F with empty metal container in oven
- Throw ice into empty metal container (for steam).
- Bake 45 – 50 minutes. (turn at half way point)
TIPS: Rising times depend on the weather (humidity and temperature) , and the flour – if you poke your finger into the dough and the hole does not bounce closed immediately your dough is ready to bake. Bubbles are another good indication of rise.
TIPS: Any high protein bread flour will do. But if you can find a local mill in your area grab a bag. Using at least part of the flour from a local source will strengthen your local food economy and strengthening your local food economy makes big waves in the self sufficiency of your region. Plus if you can find 100% extraction flour, that contains all the germ and the bran, your gut will thank you.
Real stone ground flour is so much easier to digest.
If you do have a local mill let us know in the comments! Our wheat is milled down the road at Janie’s Mill.
Time for me to start some dough.
What do you bake your bread in?
Have a great day!
Celi
Pop in and see Dale from Aussie! She has been blogging for years too! It is wonderful how many of us are still around.
29 Comments on “Coffee Tin Bread”
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It is an overcast day today – not cold exactly but it looks cold. A bread baking day!! 🦋 🛖
My mom, and everyone else around, use to bake the Boston Brown Bread in coffee cans. It was more of a cultural thing I guess since she had plenty of bread tins!
Yes – that Boston Brown bread – I have to try that! Happy Thursday Dorothy!
I started baking in the 80’s in tins, large juice tins usually. You can get more into the oven at one time. I remember it being recommended by the Laurel’s Kitchen cookbook.
Yes! You can fit a pile of cans in an oven. It’s vertical baking!! 😂
Are the cats waiting for bread and butter?! I was struck at first by the color- as my only experience with tin bread is the brown bread full of molasses so it took me a minute to adjust. It looks like a very nice crumb on the sliced pieces.
Yes! It is a lovely soft bread. ( with all that steam) And really simple to make.
Fantastic – I love thing like that! I remember getting a Scout’s badge for cooking with found objects in the wild. I boiled eggs in a coke can and cooked bacon on a hot stone.
Boiling eggs in a coke can is really funny! Did you put the stone into the fire then set the bacon on it? I love that!
Yes and I think I cooked sausages and toast on sticks, plus potatoes in the fire itself. I believe it was a self sufficiency badge because it involved camping out alone.
There is something so magic about cooking and eating outside.
Especially when you are 12 years old!
There IS magic when you are 12.
Sometimes you can find Irish oats sold in tins. We save those for baking poppy seed bread, pumpkin bread, etc.
I will tell the shopper to look out for them! Poppy seed bread sounds really good on this miserable day!
Great use of these
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen coffee sold in tins but I will look out for it now so long as it isn the nasty instant stuff. I bake seedy wholewheat and oats sourdough in a heavy enamelled cast iron lidded pot with a couple of icecubes for steam and wrap it in a teatowel when it’s done so it has a tender crust.
Has anyone tried putting balls of dough into their loaf tin and baking it to make pull apart bread? It is just so yummy slathered in butter and eaten while it’s still warm.
Oh yes! That sounds so delicious! I had forgotten all about that! I must do that again soon. Thank you Donna!
Growing up in the midwest, coffee was always sold in big aluminum tin cans with the key attached to the can. I can still remember the sound of the can when it was opened and that heavenly smell of coffee. Maxwell House anyone? I can just see everyone rolling their eyes and sticking out their tongues at the mention of that coffee. But, there weren’t too many choices then. I live in the Seattle area..the region of coffee snobs so I tell people here that’s my coffee of choice just to see them go into apoplexy! :))
Way off subject so back to the bread..it looks delicious! I just made a loaf of olive, cheese, buttermilk bread today..but not in a tin! Yum!
Oh your loaf sounds delicious!
I need to get busy and make a more interesting loaf!
Well the only reason I baked this bread was to use up a jug of buttermilk that was on it’s way out and all those little chunks of cheese ends that seem to collect in the cheese bin and we brine our own olives so we have a ton of those to also use up..Its a really nice recipe from Epicurious but easy to change up. 🙂
Sounds like you were playing Chopped!! 😂🦋
What is Chopped?
It is a TV program I watched years ago at my sons. They give you a basket of mystery food and you make something.
I bake bread in a Römertopf clay pot. Lid on to start with, and then off for the last 10 minutes to harden the crust. Good for either yeasted or sourdough.
Thank you for sharing this creative idea for baking bread using coffee cans. It’s inspirational to see how resourceful and flexible our grandmothers were in the kitchen.
~ Vika
Yes! They were. I wish I could find more of these tins so I could fill the oven with them. Baking vertical loaves is really efficient! Thank you so much for dropping by Vika!
still very hard with these old eyes to see the print. needs to be black on white paper to see.