I can smell that warm bread, and boy, does it smell good! This is a nice modern bookend to another Diary piece about bread, Three Rolls for a Nickel by Betty Baumel. Read it and imagine the basic story of fresh bread in NYC, from Baumel in the 30s to Brockmann today.
2
Way back in the day I bar-tended, checked i.ds and helped close up a small music venue cum bar in San Diego. When done, ~3:00 AM, wife-to-be and I would go to a local bakery to get the first "pull" of bread, rolls, etc. The VW bus would smell of bakery the next day and we'd have wonderfully fresh baked goods to get us to class. Life was good...
6
SmartenUp: The alcoholic content of bread proved to be a problem during Prohibition when chemists at Cornell College, Iowa, reported to the American Chemical Society that they had collected twelve samples of ordinary bread from bakeries and housewives' ovens, and after chemical analyses found that the alcohol content varied from .04 to 1.9 per cent., the latter being above the one-half of one per cent limit set by the prohibition statute.
3
That’s fascinating Molly. So the fresh bread was hot in more ways than one?!
6
n the 1950's all he had to was drive by the Silvercup Bread factory in LIC.
You could actually smell the freshly baked bread when coming off the 59th St. Bridge into Queens from the city.
Mornings were a treat if my Dad was driving into the city.
..... Now they make movies there!
...... and LIC is trendy!
7
Brooklyn must be a very strange place where something so mundane merits publication in the NYT.
2
Where do the cab drivers in New Hampshire buy their fresh, warm bread to eat on their 12-hour shifts as they drive around? Where in New Hampshire can you pop into a bakery for a fresh croissant while out walking your dog (not getting into your car) and run into a cab driver buying fresh, warm bread to eat on his shift. New Hampshire must be a strange place if you can't do that.
18
It’s not mundane at all Steve. It’s what makes living in New York City—as well as the entries in the Metropolitan Diary— great.
15
Warm bread, warm hearts...........
11
You kindly permitted him to go ahead of you in line Russell, and he kindly inquired if you needed a lift. Warm hearts accompanied those warm loaves of bread and your warm croissant.
13
Simple exchange. Simply wonderful in a crazy screwed up world.
10
The bakeries of Manhattan & Jersey City were some of my very favorite places of the 80s! Mrs. Rizzoli's weekly sausage bread was rare & wonderful!
4
Oh my that reminds me of the sausage breads in jersey city in the 70’s. They were wonderful. A Saturday treat. Close by was a live poultry market. Wonder if either has survived Jersey city’s gentrification.
1
This is my memory, too. Fresh breads in the bakery store's window! Now, Jersey City bakeries seem to offer "artisanal" breads, making them all the more unauthentic.
3
Hi, Lauren, recently transplanted ex jersey city-ite here. Guess you,re talking about downtown JC? No, live poultry markets are gone, open spaces, mom and pop stores. Downtown JC is like NY now. Very gentrified and expensive. But we can have our memories....
1
I know this bakery. Years ago, in the 80's, having just moved to New York I was wandering home in early morning, back from the City, a bit drunk, 4am, in a light snow, when the smell of fresh baked bread hit me. I stopped dead in my tracks in front of the side door to the bakery and stood there and inhaled.
After a minute or so one of the bakers popped out of that door with an arm full of semolina loaves. He saw me. He smiled. He handed me a loaf and headed off into the dawn. The bread was still warm. It was one of the greatest gifts I have ever received.
56
As a 69 year old who spends his winters now in Florida, there are several reasons I cant wait to get back to New York. A good bagel (at Nussbaum and Wu or Absolute) and fresh bread at any number of bakeries in Morningside Heights is certainly one of them!
11
Jim--
I have lived an hour and a half above the city for the second half of my life, feeling that I was getting the best of both worlds. I could afford a home and my daughter attended less crowded schools. I could visit the city at will to attend Met games, Broadway shows, museums or Coney Island.
But like you, this Metro Diary makes me wish that I lived in NYC again, to experience the day-to-day contacts like the one in todays story. These are what we miss upstate or in Florida.
25
I lived in Miami in my teen years. On Sunday morning my friends and I would stop at a bagel bakery in South Beach and wait for the first batch of bagels to come out fresh and burn your hands hot. We'd smear them with cream cheese and eat them in the car on the way home. (We'd been out all night) Sometimes I'd get one with cream cheese, lox, (Nova only, from the belly.)a slice of red onion and a slice of tomato. The blend of flavors was perfect with a good cup of of fresh coffee.
4
I grew up in Bushwick in Brooklyn. We had quite a few Italian bakeries in the area all with a vent near the front wall exhausting the steam from the bakery in the basement.
The smell of the bread was overpowering. I would stand on the vent and let the steam envelop me. I winter it was a great police to get warm.
A loaf of Italian bread was 16 cents then. (1950s) Sometimes I'd buy some fresh from the oven and butter it and eat it with a cup of tea. The butter melted and soaked the bread throughout. Sometimes my Uncle and I would pick up a loaf with a pepperoni and some provolone cheese and have it for lunch with some wine and grape soda mixed half and half. Never mind the bread. I can't even buy a pepperoni that tastes like I remember. They all seem to taste like there's jalapenos in them today.
25
My understanding is that part of the allure of baking bread--other than the good memories--is the alcohol, given off by the yeast!
4
I worked as a teen in my mother's stepfather's pizzeria. I would mix the warm water, sugar and yeast and the sweet smell was pleasant. It was even in the fresh dough coming out of the mixer. After the 2nd rising the smell was not sweet any more.
3