Since it can take so long to make baked beans with dry beans, we really prefer to start with cans of beans. The beans are already perfectly tender, so you can focus on making that flavorful, syrupy sauce instead of waiting forever for the beans to cook. If you are averse to the canned stuff, you can definitely soak and cook dry navy beans or great northern beans, but be careful not to overcook the beans, or they'll become mushy.