From Beasts of Burden to Pure Baloney: Notes on the History of Mortadella

This is the fifth in a series of six articles by Educator Judy Levin, originally written as research for our “Foods of the Lower East Side" walking and tasting tour.

In the 1971 film, "La Mortadella," Sophia Loren plays an Italian immigrant coming into New York with a 20-pound mortadella, a wedding present from her coworkers at the mortadella factory. However, she is stopped by customs officials.

“You can’t bring salami into the country,” they say.

“It’s not salami. It’s mortadella,” she replies.

This doesn’t help, and she is arrested for causing a fuss—and for breaking the law against bringing pork products into the United States. While various government agencies are arguing about who is going to pay for her ticket back to Italy, she has to stay at the airport, where she and some of the customs employees eat the delicious mortadella before her return flight can be arranged.

Loren as a factory worker in "La Mortadella"; Image courtesy www.toutlecine.com

So what is this stuff that’s delicious enough to get arrested for? Mortadella’s origins go back at least to the 14th century and possibly to ancient Rome. In its modern form, which has Protected Geographical Indication status (as Proscuitto di Parma does, or champagne), Mortadella di Bologna is made of finely ground and emulsified pork. Added to the mix are cubes of fat, spices, and sometimes pistachios. Finally, it’s cooked. This makes its texture very different from dry-cured or smoked meat products. It is soft, moist, and perishable.

Mortadella; Image courtesy www.lifeinitaly.com

Because mortadella is ancient and venerable, it has gathered the usual collection of disagreements and imitations. Disagreements begin with its name, which may come from the myrtle once used to flavor it or from the mortar (Italian, mortaio) used to pound the meat fine.

Sal Di Palo is a 4th generation proprietor of the 87-year-old New York institution that is Di Palo’s Fine Foods, purveyor of mortadella and many other Italian delicacies. Sal says mortadella means “the death of the beast of burden” (morta della, “the death of it”) and that it was a thrifty way to make use of donkeys and horses that pulled the plow. The meat was ground fine and fat was added to counteract its tough, dry consistency. Sal’s brother Lou believes that the "mortar" etymology was invented so as not to scare off the Americans, who’d rather not be reminded of the connection between death and meat.

There’s evidence to suggest that mortadella was once made of donkey meat, wild boar, and possibly even horses. “Morta della” may be a folk etymology, yet it speaks to something important in the food’s history: It is indeed made of meat ground very finely, and thus it does use bits of the animals that could not be made into more coarsely ground sausages.

DiPalo's Fine Foods in New York; Image courtesy www.italialiving.com

Our American bologna—and English polony—were created at different times in homage to the greatly admired Mortadella di Bologna, which was exported to France, England, and other parts of Europe by the 17th century. Recipes for polony go back to the 17th century in English cookbooks. Belony appears in the 1747 Hannah Glasse’s classic English cookbook. In America, German immigrants were known for making bologna, which is, after all, made by the same process by which one makes frankfurters. Lebanon bologna is a slightly smoked and aged product from the Pennsylvania “Dutch.” American bologna can be made of chicken, beef, pork, turkey, or venison.

American law dictates that bologna can’t contain the cubes of fat that characterize Italian mortadella, but the two distant cousins still share a common lineage. So the American bologna that kids bring to school on Wonder Bread has its roots in what one scholar calls “mystery meat minced by medieval monks,” possibly in England and Germany even before the Italians got around to it.

Though of course it’s a matter of opinion, many say that American bologna doesn’t taste as good as its European predecessor. According to the head of one of the Italian pork factories, “Mortadella makers look upon American-made bologna the way French champagne producers view Ripple—with disgusted pity.” Which is why so many people make their way to Di Palo’s in what remains of Manhattan’s Little Italy, for a taste of Italian history.

--Posted by Educator Judy Levin


For more reading on the subject, check out:

S. Irene Virbila , “No Baloney: Mortadella Sausage, Made With Italian Finesse And Care, Is A Bolognese Specialty”, The Chicago Tribune, January 04, 1990
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1990-01-04/entertainment/9001010548_1_pork-pigs-mortar

Justin Demetri, “Salumi: Italian Cured Meats”, Life in Italy http://www.lifeinitaly.com/food/salumi.asp

The Di Palo Fine Foods Web Site: http://store.dipaloselects.com/meat.html

From Poisonous Sweets to Heavenly Halvah: Notes on the History of Candy

This is the fourth in a series of 6 articles by Educator Judy Levin, originally written as research for our “Foods of the Lower East Side" walking and tasting tour.

Sugar candies were among the first products marketed directly to children. Widely available by the 1830s, these treats were crafted in a dazzling array of colors and shapes, including pressed-sugar dolls, horses, guns, stars, hats, cigars, gin bottles (a questionable choice for kids), and so on. They were notable for their cheapness—the original penny candies could be a dozen for one cent—and for the sometimes poisonous things they were colored or flavored with (like arsenic in green dye).

A candy vendor on Hester Street on New York City's Lower East Side, c.1890

Of course, reformers were concerned. Babyhood Magazine c.1879 gave worried mamas a long list of experiments to perform on candy to see if it was adulterated with poisonous flavors or colors, or stretched with additives. There was also a concern that candy would lead to “intemperance, gluttony, and debauchery,” and that children who indulged their early appetites for sugar might be more prone to sexual misdeeds or alcoholism later on.

Other concerns stemmed from the making of cheap candy and chocolate in sweatshop conditions, with women or girls dipping sugar mice in chocolate by hand and then licking their fingers, standing from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. because the boss thought sitting made them “lazy.” As with many other products, concern about candy was based on questions of consumers' health, the misery of workers, or both.

Young women at work in a candy factory in the early 20th century

Mass-produced candy wasn’t sold only to immigrant children in America. Like pickles and a few other cheap edible pleasures, candy was a strong contrast to the often bland diets of the poor. It figures prominently in tales of tenement and immigrant life—both in novels (the smallest sisters in All-of-A-Kind Family, the classic children’s novel of the Lower East Side, agonize happily over penny candy purchases) and in memoirs and oral histories. 97 Orchard Stree resident Josephine Baldizzi remembered sugar-coated almonds (confetti), torrone (either nougat or a kind of nut brittle), and 1-cent Hooter bars (her favorite—an American candy bar rather than the traditional Italian candies), and American peppermint drops.

Candy-making also became a business in which immigrants could compete. One of the candies that comes to America with immigrants and goes on to be a Lower East Side success story is halvah (also spelled halva, halwa, helwa. . . .). Its root is the Arabic word for “sweet,” and versions of halvah go back about 3,000 years. Its long history results in arguments about its ingredients, flavorings (vanilla, chocolate, orange, carrot), consistency, and historical origins. Some people also like to eat it; others say it’s “just right for spackling the walls.”

Halvah for sale by the pound

There are two general styles of halvah. The one that comes from India, Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan is semolina-based, though it includes oil, flour, and sugar (or honey). The other widely-known version is based on ground seeds or nuts and is Romanian, Russian, Greek, Israeli, Turkish, and Lower East Side Jewish.

Halvah was originally sold by “Turkish, Syrian, and Armenian street vendors”, according to author John Mariani, but the variety best known on the Lower East Side was brought here by a 22-year-old immigrant from Minsk, then the Ukraine, named Nathan Radutzky. He started making it in 1907, and it was sold on pushcarts and in delis. His company moved to Brooklyn and was renamed Joyva by his sons after World War II. These days they also make chocolate-covered jelly rings, marshmallow twists, and a hard sesame candy with a well-known logo: a drawing of a Turkish guy.

Joyva's chocolate-covered halvah

Radutzky’s recipe, based on ground sesame seeds, comes in vanilla, chocolate, marbled (mixed vanilla and chocolate), chocolate-covered (rolled in mixed nuts or not), and with and without pistachios. The “chocolate-covered” part is surely an American addition. Otherwise, Richard Radutzky, grandson of Joyva’s founder, says the stuff is made as it always was, partly by hand, in 60-gallon copper mixing bowls. Workers combine tahini with a “taffy made of corn syrup, sugar, and egg whites, elongating and aerating the blend until the halvah holds together in sinewy strands.”


Halvah’s popularity is attested to by references to it in literature and popular culture. In a play called The Centuries: Portrait of a Tenement House (Emanuel Jo Bansshe, 1927) an immigrant in need of a job is given the suggestion (among others) that he go sell halvah. In The Garret, Carl Van Vechten reports that some patrons of the Yiddish theaters are driven crazy by other patrons eating during the plays, often fruit or candy—and especially halvah. While it wasn't as iconic as lox and bagels, no one ever felt the need to explain what halvah is at that time.

--Posted by Educator Judy Levin

Community Eating via Buca di Beppo

Tenement Museum Educator Sarah Lohman is a Historic Gastronomist who chronicles her explorations of culinary history on her blog "Four Pounds Flour", where this article originally appeared.

One of my colleagues at the Tenement Museum is collecting oral histories from Chinatown. This excerpt about eating caught my attention:

Interviewer: I remembered when I came to this country, one day I was dining out in a restaurant in Manhattan Chinatown. I saw lots of people ate with a fork on a plate. I wasn’t very used to it. In Taiwan, we only used plates to collect bones we didn’t want.

Interviewee A: Ah…..that’s right.

I: In Taiwan, we ate from small bowls with chopsticks, not from plates with forks. (A & I laughed)

A: Yes, that’s a big difference.

Interviewee B: In Chinese culture, we share dishes with everyone sitting at the table. The Westerners prefer to have their own dishes.

Chinese Food, Served Family-Style

A: They prefer that everyone orders their own dishes and eats it separately.

B: It is individualistic. Sharing a dish with someone else is not something that would come to their mind first…… this is a cultural..uh..uh..

I: Cultural difference.

A & B: That’s right.


This conversation immediately reminded me of my experience with the opposite circumstance: seeing communal eating for the first time. Sometime in the mid to late ’90s, a Midwestern chain restaurant called Buca di Beppo opened in the mall near my home town. Offering “Italian Immigrant Cuisine,” the restaurant served family-style meals: large dishes were brought to the table for everyone to share. I remember my friends patiently explaining to me that I could not order my own, personal dish of cavatelli, that the table had to work as a whole to decide on several dishes everyone might enjoy. As silly as it feels to me now, I know that night was the first time I had eaten out at a restaurant where the table ordered together and shared the food, as opposed to every individual ordering their own plate. The concept was completely new to me.

From Buca di Beppo's Facebook Page

Being young, I picked up on the method after the first time, and thereafter could laugh along with my friends when we told exasperated stories of how our parents and grandparents just didn’t get it. I remember family members getting truly irritated: “But I want stuffed shells!” “Grandma, you’re going to get stuffed shells, but it’s too much for one person. You share it with everyone.” Many of my relations vowed never to return to that terrible restaurant, where they couldn’t order their own food.

Culinary historian Hasia Diner remarks on American eating habits in her book Hungering for America, a look at immigrant foodways in the United States. Diner attributes the habit of eating individually to the bounty on food available in the US as compared to the relatively poor fare of the Italians. She quotes the oral history of an Italian immigrant from the 1920s who said ” (back home) The meal was one dish, from which the entire family ate; here there is a variety of food and each person has his own plate and eating utensils.”

I believe that Buca di Beppo was the first chain restaurant to introduce communal eating to a main-stream audience. It’s a way of dining that I still see as relatively uncommon in midwestern restaurants. Since my teenage experience there, I’ve eaten Chinese, Indian, Greek and Ethiopian food; styles that culturally require you to share dishes with the whole table. Buca is not the perfect restaurant, but I do believe it gave me my training wheels to understand how other cultures eat communally.

-- Posted by Educator Sarah Lohman

"Who Moved My Cheese?" Queso Fresco Goes from Niche to Mass Market

This is the third in a series of 6 articles by Educator Judy Levin, originally written as research for our “Foods of the Lower East Side" tasting tour. During the coldest months of January and February, we're offering a modified indoor version of the tour.

Some people on our “Foods of the Lower East Side” tours are familiar with queso blanco and queso fresco. Others are a bit confused: we’re talking about things that translate to “white cheese” and “fresh cheese,” and they are both fresh white cheeses. One distinction between the two is that most of the cheeses referred to as queso blanco do not melt when heated but rather soften and hold their shape, making them ideal for fried cheese or bits of hot cheese in things, while queso fresco is more likely to be eaten with fruit or crumbled, cold.

Homemade Queso Fresco with Chiles

As my colleague Renzo Ortega has said, very firmly, it is not a good idea to put all Spanish-speaking peoples into “the same box” just because they speak Spanish—or to over-generalize about their foods. So it’s important to remember that queso blanco and queso fresco are loose categories that refer to different varieties of cheese in different regions.

Of course, fresh white cheeses aren’t proprietary to Spanish-speaking nations. They’re traditionally made in regions that form a belt around Earth’s equator—historically, where it’s too hot to age cheese. In this category are the aforementioned quesos; also Indian panir, Syrian halloumi (a white goat and sheep milk cheese that can be grilled), Italian mozzarella and ricotta, quark, fromage blanc, a variety of fresh goat and sheep cheeses, kefir cheese, and many others.

Grilled Corn with Queso Blanco

Spanish-speaking people who came to the U.S. and the Lower East Side were accustomed to having cheap, fresh, white cheeses, but could not easily bring these cheeses with them. Fresh cheeses, especially those traditionally made of raw milk, are not cheap (or necessarily legal) to import: An imported raw milk cheese must be aged for at least 60 days. Having noted that the white cheeses of Batista in the Essex Street Market are all American-made, I googled “imported Dominican cheese” and found numerous articles about smuggling and mass outbreaks of tuberculosis and listeriosis.

So immigrants used what was available--Monterey jack is a common stand-in. But the availability of more authentic cheeses is changing. Currently, the push for more authentic quesos comes both from consumers—not all of them immigrants or children of immigrants—who want access to these cheeses and from companies that would like to sell more of them.

Tom Shore, a Pine Hill, North Carolina, Anglo dairy farmer, learned from Hispanic neighbors to make queso blanco when he could no longer support his farm selling his milk. In the early 2000s, some of his neighbors were buying raw milk (illegal in North Carolina) and making their own cheeses, rather than pay $8/lb for the imported (pasteurized) stuff. Outbreaks of listeriosis resulted in miscarriages. When this story was originally reported in 2004, there were more than 350,000 Latinos, mostly Mexican, in North Carolina, but no reliable access to their fresh cheeses. By the time a business site called “Hispanic Trending” picked up this story, they called it “Queso Cash-Cow”. It ain’t subtle, but is indeed relevant to the story of how the foods of immigrants do or do not become available in the U.S.


Maria Castro, Founder of Castro Cheese, in the mid-1960's

Other companies making or distributing American-made quesos began with Latino immigrants. The Castro Cheese Company of Houston, which sells “La Vaquita” products, was begun in 1971 by Mexican immigrant Maria Castro. She said their customers “find the flavors, the tastes, the smells, the memories that take us back to our roots. Back to our mother’s kitchens. That’s why they love ‘La Vaquita’". At the end of 2010, Castro sold the business to a national consortium. It was a family company, but you can’t make enough cheese in mama’s kitchen to supply Wal-Mart.

One of the biggest of the “Hispanic” cheese producers in the U.S., Tropical Cheese Industries of New Jersey, was also started by an immigrant, Rafael Mendez from Cuba, in the early 1960s. He began by making feta cheese with some Greek immigrants and then expanded into Caribbean, Mexican, and Central American varieties as demand increased.

My inclination (as a middle-class foodie) is to be sarcastic about the mass-market brands that replace regionally specific originals. Kroger’s Supermarket sells store-brand “Nice’n Cheesy Queso Blanco with Jalapenos,” for instance. Yet these are likely to be the cheeses that are readily available and affordable to people who are not middle-class foodies.

Kroger's Queso Blanco

As we look at how immigrants adopt “American” cheeses, it’s also interesting to note that many recipes for “American” foods now call for previously unavailable Latin American cheeses. For example, a recent press release for El Mexicano brand Queso Fresco Casero suggested it “as an alternative for feta, mozzarella, or Monterey Jack” and for use in “all kinds of soups, salads, and casseroles.” On a more daring note, Tropical Cheese Industries offers recipes for “Tropical Cheese Asian Noodle Salad” and “Chocolate and Queso Blanco Fondue”.

Fusion, here we come….

--Posted by Tenement Museum Educator Judy Levin

A Winter Version of Our "Foods" Tour Comes in From the Cold!

“I never much liked fried okra. But the moment I learned that my mother had had a stroke, I thought, ‘I never got her recipe for fried okra.’ It made me so sad.”

A group of visitors were gathered around a table above our new Visitors Center at 103 Orchard Street, sharing stories about their favorite childhood memories. It’s how we start every Foods of the Lower East Side program, and I never cease to marvel at the stories I hear. But this story about fried okra seemed to sum up so much of what this program is all about.

We began offering the Foods of the Lower East Side walking tour this summer, but as winter approached, we realized that it’s no fun trying to snack in sub-freezing weather. So we designed an indoor version of this program: all the same foods served in the comfort of our brand-new classroom with sweeping views of Delancey Street.

What could be better than dumplings on a cold winter day?

Something about moving the tour indoors changes the program. With more time to relax, nibble, and chat, visitors share more of themselves than they do on the walking tour. And with less time spent walking between stops, we have more time to discuss the history of immigrant cuisine and how it shapes so much of what we eat today.

But food, as the “fried okra” story reminded me, is as much about loss as discovery. So often, the foods we remember most are lost to us. Our grandmother has passed away, and somehow her recipe for fried chicken or brisket just doesn’t taste the same when we make it. Or we’ve moved to the big city, and the apples here just aren’t as crisp and fresh as the ones our father used to make apple cobbler.

These feelings of loss are compounded if you’re an immigrant. U.S.-born citizens can usually re-create their favorite foods with some success. But an immigrant can’t just walk down to the corner market and find the same ingredients their mothers used back in China or Mexico. And immigrants often work long hours, making it hard to find the time to cook for themselves anyhow. Leaving your mother is bad enough;leaving your motherland can be doubly heartbreaking. And if you’re an immigrant, the foods you eat are a constant reminder of both leave-takings.

Fresh bialys from Kossar's on their way to the Museum

Bialys, salami sandwiches, pork dumplings, gumbo, shepherd’s pie – no matter what we eat, there’s a story to be told. I’m so glad that we offer a program where everyone gets to hear and share those stories. It’s just one of the many ways we break down the cultural barriers that too often separate us from our fellow Americans, no matter where they were born or what immigration status they must bear.

--Posted by Education Coordinator Adam Steinberg

Salty, Sour and Controversial: A Quick History of the Pickle

This is the second in a series of 6 articles by Educator Judy Levin, originally written as research for our “Foods of the Lower East Side" tasting tour. During the coldest months of January and February, we're offering a modified indoor version of the tour.

A true story: two old Jewish guys get into a fight about whether a kosher pickle is preserved in vinegar or in brine, a salt solution. The argument escalates until they are questioning each other’s Judaism, insulting each other’s ancestors (who must have come from a strange little hick town to be so ill-informed), and reaching no conclusion except that the other guy is SO wrong.

People have strong feelings about pickles.

Classic Dill Pickles

Pickling is one of the oldest ways of preserving foods. It goes back 4,000 or 5,000 years in the Middle and Far East. Recipes for pickled fruits and vegetables (also meats, but that’s another story) came to America with the Dutch and English, who had eaten them in the old country and on the ships coming over. Pickles were a part of American cuisine, not just before the Jewish deli, but even before there was a United States!

"The Dill Pickle Rag", c.1906

To the question of method: either vinegar or brine will work. Vinegar is faster, but brining fruits and vegetables allows for fermentation, which creates different flavors. The Pickle Guy, one of the last of the Lower East Side pickle makers, traces his recipe back to Poland. He packs uncooked cucumbers in brine solution. Sarah Levy, writing the first Jewish cookbook in America, used vinegar. Other pickle recipes compromise by suggesting either salting the vegetables before preserving them in vinegar, or preserving them in brine and then flavoring them with vinegar. Of course there are also less traditional approaches: in Mississippi, they put sour pickles in Kool-aid.

About half of the city’s 200 or so Jewish pickle shops were on the Lower East Side in the early 20th century. In a 1929 Saturday Evening Post article the writer says, “There is one store on Hester Street . . . which probably contains enough pickles to have exhausted the entire cucumber crop of the Eastern seaboard”. But why the cucumber? Historically, pickles have also made from cabbage (sauerkraut), green tomatoes, turnips, mushrooms, walnuts, nasturtiums, and just about anything else we eat. For much of the world, for much of history, pickled vegetables were all the vegetables you were likely to eat during winter.

The eventual dominance of the cucumber pickle may be based less on ethnic Jewish cuisine than on the influence of the Heinz Company. By the late 1800s, Heinz had bought its own Long Island cucumber farms, displayed its products at the 1893 World’s Fair, and advertised widely: Where the Flatiron Building now stands, a six-foot, light-up Heinz cucumber pickle once stood.

The Heinz Company c.1910; Image courtesy American Antiquarian

Given the importance of pickles in most cultures and for thousands of years, it seems odd that between about the 1820s and 1920s, many American reformers, dieticians, and food faddists rejected the pickle, vehemently. When in the 1920s dietician Bertha Wood wrote that Jewish pickles interfered with “assimilation,” her concern was both for the assimilation of food into the body and the assimilation of foreigners into American culture. Like alcohol, strong flavors or stimulants of any kind (spices, coffee, vinegar) seemed likely to overstimulate the senses, the stomach—and the social order.

Mexican Pickled Vegetables; Photo by Amber Gress

Pickled Chinese Long Beans; Image courtesy SeriousEats

American pickles are more diverse than ever before, with most immigrant groups bringing their own versions. They’re celebrated each year at a Lower East Side International Pickle Day, which features Middle Eastern pomegranate pickled turnips, Chinese pickled lemons, Japanese plums, and Indian mangoes, as well as sauerkraut and cucumbers. In fact, if you wanted to use one type of food to survey all of American culture, the pickle might be it. Pickles preserve food—but also memories of childhood or home.

--Posted by Tenement Museum Educator Judy Levin

For more reading on this subject:

On the history of pickling, Lucy Norris in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America (Oxford University Press, 2004).

The Sensible Cook, Peter Rose’s modern translation of a popular 17th century Dutch cookbook (Syracuse U. Press, 1989.)

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, Harold McGhee, (New York: Scribner, 2004).

“Pickles in Many Tongues at Lower East Side Festival,”  Jennifer 8 Lee, The New York Times, 9/12/2008

"How to Quick Pickle", Serious Eats, 5/21/10

From the Staff of Life to the Fluffy White Wonder: A Short History of Bread

This is the first in a series of 6 articles by Educator Judy Levin, originally written as research for our “Foods of the Lower East Side" tasting tour. During the coldest months of January and February, we're offering a modified indoor version of the tour.

Most cultures have had one complex carbohydrate at the center of their diets: potatoes or grains like rice, sorghum, corn, barley, rye, oats, millet, and wheat. Bread made from some of these cereals is one of those staples, its importance reflected in Western religions and languages: The Lord’s Prayer says “give us this day our daily bread.” The word lord is from the Old English for “keeper of the loaf.” Dough and bread are slang for money. A companion is someone you eat bread with. Long before potatoes or corn arrived in Europe, bread was the “staff of life.”

“Staff of life” bread is dark, made from whole wheat or mixtures of wheat, rye, barley, millet, and oats. German pumpernickel is whole-grain rye flour baked until nearly black. Its name—dialect for “devil’s fart”— reminds us that dark breads can be difficult to digest. But rye grows where wheat cannot, in bad soil and cold climates. Other peasant breads are “black” only in contrast to “white” loaves. English brown bread could contain rye, barley, and buckwheat. Some Italian breads included the bran and germ removed from the wheat so that whiter flour could be sold to the rich.

An Italian Bakery on Bleecker Street c.1937; Image Courtesy the New York Public Library

The desire for white(r) bread is ancient. In Rome 2000 years ago, “to know the color of one’s bread” meant to know one’s place in society. Rich people ate bread of finely ground wheat, there and elsewhere, because wheat flour develops more gluten than other flours and rises better. The wealthy French of the 1600s ate bread made whiter and lighter with the addition of milk and of yeast from brewing beer. But truly white bread couldn’t be made from stone-ground flour. It wasn’t ground finely enough and there was no technology that removed all the bran and germ—the brown part that contains the nutrients and flavor. Technological improvements in 1834 (steel rollers) and 1880s (high-speed rollers and mechanical blowers to remove bean and germ) made finer flour, but it was still faintly yellow.

By the 18th century bakers bleached flour and adulterated bread to make it whiter. 20th century Wonder Bread is the extreme outcome of the search for white bread. Its whiteness and plastic wrapping showed that it was clean, sterile, and untouched by human hands. Added sugar and chemicals speeded the baking process and created a long shelf life. By the 1920s our daily bread was truly white and then, in the 1930s, sliced and wrapped in plastic.

An early advertisement for Wonder bread

Stories and memoires of the immigrant experience of bread offer contradictory images. The Fleischmann family, Jews from Hungary, established their yeast company after the Civil War because they so disliked American bread that they brought over their brother—and their family’s yeast. Yet numerous immigrant narratives speak of the astonishing white bread first tasted on Ellis Island. Many children of immigrants write of being ashamed to bring their un-American homemade or dark bread to school.

By the 1960s, some Americans were rebelling against the “white bread” culture of the 1950s, seeking foods—including bread—that were healthier, tastier, and more varied than Wonder Bread. African-Americans, reclaiming their cultural “roots,” encouraged the children and grandchildren of immigrants to reconsider their own history. Assimilated European-Americans felt nostalgia for the cultures they’d left behind. Ethnic restaurants flourished. And an ad campaign showed a stereotypical Native American, Italian mama, or Asian kid eating rye bread with the slogan, “You Don’t Have to be Jewish to Love Levy’s Real Jewish Rye.” Now commercial pumpernickel is dyed brown instead of bleached white.

A 1960's advertisement for Levy's Jewish rye bread

People have always moved from one place to another. Whether they do so as conquerors or immigrants, they tend to hang on to their basic carbohydrate.

--Posted by Tenement Museum Educator Judy Levin

A Faux Feast

We're stocking up on food here at the Tenement Museum, but it's not for a holiday party. It's faux food for our upcoming exhibit "Shop Life" which will explore the many businesses housed at 97 Orchard over the years, including a 19th Century German saloon run by John Schneider and his wife Caroline. While these replicas wouldn't taste very good, they sure look the part! Historic faux food expert Sandy Levins meticulously crafted each piece.

A pitcher of milk, Blutwurst Sausage, Sauerbraten in a pot, and Lebkuchen

Lebkuchen (in the rectangular pan) is a traditional treat from Nuremberg, Germany, where John Schneider was born. Similar to gingerbread, this cookie is flavored with spices like aniseed, coriander, cloves, ginger, cardamom and allspice, as well as nuts including almonds, hazelnuts, and walnuts, or candied fruit.

Cut Lebkuchen (in the octagonal bowl), Pig's Feet, Heaven and Earth, Almonds, and Sauerkraut

"Himmel und Erde" or "Heaven and Earth", in the top right pot above, is a traditional German mixture of mashed potatoes and apples.

Traditional German pretzels--these look delicious!

Pickles are still a favorite treat here in the Lower East Side

If you've been on our "Foods of the Lower East Side" tour, you've sampled traditional German pretzels and pickles just like these. Though they've been thoroughly Americanized, both of these foods originate in immigrant communities.

The "Slop Bucket"

The Slop Bucket was a particular challenge to create. Caroline Schneider wouldn't have wasted much in her kitchen--food was a precious commodity. Here we have what is essentially a 19th-Century compost bin, with grape stems, apple cores, eggshells and various peels, all re-created in precise detail.

"Shop Life" will open in 2012--we'll keep you posted as the exhibit develops!
For more information about Sandy Levin's work creating replica foods, visit http://historicfauxfoods.com/workshop.shtml.

Baking with Schmaltz

Around the turn of the 20th century, Jewish immigrants began to flood into America by the thousands, coming largely from Eastern Europe and Russia. These Jewish immigrants were faced with the grand question of Americanization: "What traditions from my home country do I preserve, and which do I shed to become more 'American'?" Many new immigrants looked to their dinner tables to begin the assimilation process.

Cookbooks printed at this time reveal "...the choices Jewish women made and, at times, the conflicts that they felt as they negotiated the tension between kosher laws and their upwardly mobiles aspirations... As the 20th century marched on, many Jewish women felt comfortable assimilating through the table...It was possible to do this and still remain Jewish in identity, soul and even according to religious law if desired." (1)

In the pages of early 20th-century cookbooks, you can find the Americanization process written in the recipes. Some of the most literal examples come from cookbooks designed to accompany commercial products, many printed in both English and Yiddish. In the Manoschewitz cookbook pictured below, you can find Passover-friendly recipes for Boston Cream Pie with a matzo meal crust and Mock Oatmeal Cookies, made with schmaltz (chicken fat) instead of butter.

The Mock Oatmeal cookies aren’t as bad as they sound, particularly when they are fresh from the oven and made with Russ & Daughters’ schmaltz. For the recipe, head to my blog Four Pounds Flour.

(1) Schenone, Laura. 1,000 Years Over a Hot Stove. W.W. Norton & Company, 2003.

- Posted by Sarah Lohman

What do peanut butter cookies have to do with the story of Jewish immigration in America?

They're tied to an early 20th century cookbook called The Settlement Cookbook.

"When Mrs. Simon Kantor and Mrs. Henry Schoenfeld originally compiled an array of German Jewish recipes, they intended to create a textbook for use at the Milwaukee Settlement house, which provided cooking classes to newly arrived Jewish immigrants." (1)

This book, published in 1901, includes traditional German and Jewish recipes, like instructions for pickled herring and Passover cookery. But the cookbook also includes American classics such as pumpkin pie, recipes for cooking pork and bacon, and even Chicken Chow Mein, a faddish dish invented around the turn of the century in America’s Chinatowns.

This cookbook had its roots in Americanization and assimilation but also became a compendium of American food and a symbol for the incredible diversity of America’s dinner tables. The book had a staying power beyond the education of new Jewish immigrants. It went through over forty printings and remains the best selling charity cookbook to date.

I own the 27th edition, published 1946, which was a present to my Catholic Grandmother on her wedding day. It is inscribed to her: "With all my love and best wishes in your new cooking ventures."

My mother remembers making peanut butter cookies from this book every Christmas. Baking them for the first time in my own kitchen, I felt a sudden connection to my mother, and I could imagine her as a child working beside my grandmother. Through this act of recreation via baking, I suddenly felt more connected to my family’s history and gained a better understanding of my past.

Try these cookies in your own kitchen; they’re small and crispy and have become a favorite of mine and of my fellow educators at the Tenement Museum.

CLICK PICTURE BELOW:

(1) Schenone, Laura. 1,000 Years Over a Hot Stove. W.W. Norton & Company, 2003.

- Posted by Sarah Lohman

How to Make Dinner for 15 Cents

Lady Liberty pleads “Give me your tired, your hungry, your poor,” and many immigrants came here because they were starving. Laura Schenone writes in her book A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove, “ the desire and expectation to eat abundantly came to express the very essence of America.”

In the 1870s and 1880s, the world was rapidly industrializing. In rural areas, food was self-produced: poor families relied on vegetable gardens as a staple source of sustenance, and most had some livestock or the ability to hunt and fish. When they immigrated to America, and especially to New York City, they found themselves in fourth floor walk-ups, where water comes from a communal pump and there is no garbage pickup. The kitchen was also a bedroom, laundry room, bathroom and work room. Vegetables had to be bought, not grown, and selecting the best produce from a market was a new skill to learn. An 1877 Scribner’s Monthly described the Lower East Side’s Catherine Market as a “little heap of fish scales… butcher’s offal, and rotting vegetables.”

How do you cook a meal for your family in these conditions? It seems like it would be easy to drown in a world of low quality food, demanding physical labor, and sheer exhaustion. Women had to adapt and learn new ways to feed their families, and they had to completely relearn how to cook.

Enter Juliet Corson, a woman determined to re-teach working class immigrants how to feed their families. Corson was a modest woman who moved to New York with her family at six years old. A sickly child, she spent much of her youth in the house, reading. At 16, she was forced out by an evil stepmother, which left her in a sudden, desperate need for work.

Corson found a job in a library and lived there as well, which helped to stretch her meager wages. This brush with poverty left her determined to help the working class eek out the best existence possible. And she believed that was possible through an overhaul of the dinner table.

“In 1876 she founded the New York Cooking School (at 8 St. Marks place btw 2nd and third), open to rich and poor, charging tuition on a sliding scale so that no one would be turned away.” (Feeding America)

A year later she self-published a pamphlet entitled “Fifteen Cent Dinners for Workingman’s Families.” It laid out a weekly plan totaling $2.63 for a family of six, about $52 in today’s money. Her pamphlet was distributed for free and reprinted in newspaper all across the eastern seaboard. It offered smart, practical advice that also reflected the dinner-table values of a meat-and-potato culture. She emphasized the ability of the working class to afford meat if economy was employed. Offal was encouraged and broth used to cook mutton for an evening meal was to be saved and drunk for breakfast the next morning. The menu is nearly devoid of fresh fruit and vegetables, but she encouraged her readers to spend extra money on bread and milk.

I became very familiar with Miss Corson’s recipes when I tried to live on her economic plan. For one week, I ate every meal on Corson’s menu, which included everything from macaroni and cheese to stewed tripe. If you’d like to read more about my experience eating like a tenement family, swing by my blog Four Pounds Flour.

Stay tuned tomorrow for more on food and immigrants.

- Posted by Sarah Lohman

The Fourth of July Picnic, Tenement-Style

Besides fireworks, the most important part of the Fourth of July for many is eating lots of delectable food straight off the grill. What did the residents of tenements eat on this holiday? And since the tenements were small and poorly ventilated in the summer heat, where would tenement-dwellers have eaten their Fourth of July cuisine?

In the hot summer weather, Lower East Side families tried to escape the tenements as often as they could, usually twice a month. Sunday was the most common day for a family outing, as it was typically the only day off from work. In years when the Fourth of July fell on a Sunday (like it does this year), families probably flocked to locations all over the city to have picnics. Scheutzen Park, which opened in New Jersey in 1875, attracted German immigrants from the Lower East Side’s Kleindeutschland neighborhood. They would walk to the trans-Hudson ferries that took them to New Jersey. Celtic Park, in Sunnyside, Queens, drew mainly Irish immigrants. (For more information on this topic, be sure to check out Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn of the Century New York by Kathy Peiss.)

Even on our nation’s birthday, it is likely that immigrants would have eaten foods that were familiar to them. Over time many of these foods have become part of mainstream American food culture. When we imagine summertime barbeques, we see potato salad, cole slaw, hamburgers, sauerkraut, sausage, Italian ice, and many other foods that immigrants introduced to the United States. And how could we forget the hot dog? German immigrants brought wienerwurst to the United States during the nineteenth century. Now an all-beef hotdog on a split-top bun is as American as apple pie. Also read 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement for more information about the food that tenement dwellers ate.

"Scraped ice seller on a hot day."
Collection of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum
http://photos.tenement.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;key=9845

Interestingly, immigrants are to thank for the legendary Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest. The story goes that four immigrants held a hot dog eating contest in 1916, the year Nathan’s Famous opened on Surf Avenue in Coney Island, to settle the dispute of who was the most patriotic of the bunch. The battle has been held every year on July 4th ever since and is open for anyone to participate.

In 1895, a trolley ride to Coney Island only cost five or ten cents. For families who could not afford travel costs, various fraternal and social organizations as well as political organizations and unions paid for mass outings and provided boats to take members to cooler locations. Coney Island drew an estimated 125,000 visitors on July 4, 1900. A New York Times article reported on the spectacle: “A sweltering host, seeking beer and breezes, descended upon Coney Island yesterday.” Apparently they argued with the train conductors about the extra 5 cent charge that applied to all holidays. Imagine being in the heat, desperate to escape the crowded tenements, and having to pay a higher price—it must have been brutal! The article continued, “A number of people living in the sweltering tenement districts in town remained by the ocean side all night to enjoy the cool air.” They were discovered after police, instructed to patrol the beach after 10 o’clock at night, found many people still lingering on the sand.

We wish all of our readers a cool and happy Fourth of July! (The Tenement Museum will be OPEN on Sunday July 4th so come for a visit if you want to celebrate our nation's heritage by recognizing some of the people who made it the America it is today...)

-posted by Devin

Fantastic Event Alert: On June 10, an immigration story told through food and song

‘You won’t believe this. My father brought this from Europe, and it has been kept ever since. It’s a cheese.’

- Josephine Burson, May 2007

Long before becoming an educator at the museum and learning about the raspberries, bagels, and jars of kasha left behind at 97 Orchard Street, I knew about the enduring strength of certain foodstuffs when left untouched over time.

Back in the spring of 1997, I went to Memphis, TN, my hometown, to see my paternal grandmother, Josephine Burson. She was in a nostalgic mood, recounting stories about her childhood and showing me photographs of her parents. When we had finished looking at photos, she brought out something that I had never seen before – something wrapped in aluminum foil that looked kind of like a pumice stone. She said it was a desiccated wedge of cheese, brought to this country by my great-grandfather in the early 20th century.

Apparently, sometime around 1895, my great-great-grandmother gave a wedge of cheese to her14-year-old son when he left his shtetl in Lithuania so as to avoid conscription in the Tsar’s army. My great-grandfather never ate the cheese, nor did he throw it away. He took it with him to Johannesburg, South Africa, where he went to live with his uncles for a time before striking out on his own.

Eventually, he moved yet another world away – not to the Lower East Side of NYC, but to Memphis, TN, where he married and had four daughters.

Strangely still in possession of the cheese when he died, my great-grandfather passed it down to my grandmother. When my grandmother passed away last June, I inherited the now 115-year-old wedge of cheese.

On June 10th, 2010, the cheese (now hermetically sealed in a glass jar) will sit in a place of honor at a unique dinner event at Henry Street Settlement. This intimate event, presented by fellow Museum educator Sarah Lohman and me, will feature a performance of my upcoming Rounder Records release, Silver and Ash. The album is a collection of songs that imagine my maternal grandmother's life in Germany through her immigration to the United States in 1938, while also exploring my own struggles with rupture, silence, guilt, and continuity.

The performance itself will be divided into four "chapters," each of which will be accompanied by a food course. The dishes, prepared by Sarah -- an historic gastronomist -- will progress from the late 19th century Eastern European origins of my story through Weimar Germany and 1950s Tennessee, ending with the dessert my grandmother always made for me as I was growing up: pound cake.

The recipes come from period sources, including The Settlement Cookbook, an early 20th century American cookbook that catalogs ethnic Jewish and German cuisines.

For tickets ($60) and more information, including Sarah’s delicious menu, go to http://tinyurl.com/ClareTix

We look forward to singing and cooking for you on June 10th!

- Posted by Clare Burson

[Editor's Note: Clare first visited the Tenement Museum to take photos for her album art. She was so moved by the exhibits and stories of 97 Orchard Street that she decided to work here. Sarah was first featured on the Tenement Museum blog in January 2009, when she spent a week eating like an 1877 tenement housewife. She also found herself magnetically drawn to the Lower East Side and started working here last year. Don't miss this incredible chance to explore what we never get to inside the museum - immigration and family stories told through taste, smell and sound.]

It's Dinner Time! Author Jane Ziegelman at Tenement Talks

Do you know when sauerkraut, knishes and other popular ethnic specialties made their debuts in America? Have you ever wondered what the passengers on immigrant ships to the United States ate during their journey? What was a nineteenth century urban grocery store like?

Join us for our latest Tenement Talk, featuring Jane Ziegelman and her newest book 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement, and you can discover the answers to your immigrant culinary questions. In her book, Ziegelman weaves surprising historical data and various ethnic recipes as she tells the stories of five families who called the tenement at 97 Orchard home between 1863 and 1935.

Is there a better lens to tell the story of immigrants through than food? Prior to the immigration explosion of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ethnic cuisines were largely isolated by geography. Although Americans today eat a wide variety of food, to understand our culinary history we have to imagine a time when potato salad was a foreign delicacy.

The author writes that for immigrants, cooking their native foods was (and often remains!) one of the best (and last) options they had to preserve their homeland’s culture, as they felt the pressure to become assimilated into their new nation.

Ziegelman is very descriptive in her writing and explains culinary aspects that had never even crossed my mind. She writes how the tenements must have smelled during different seasons, explaining that the smells would have been worse in the winter months, seeing as the few windows in the apartments would have been kept shut to keep the cold out. If you were living on the Lower East Side in the late nineteenth century, you would likely have smelled cabbage cooking, various meats roasting, and wood or coal smoke drifting through the air (depending on the type of stove being used).

Her book is very relevant today, as large numbers of immigrants continue to help us define American cuisine. As Ziegelman writes, “though the actors have changed, the culinary revolution that began in the nineteenth century continues today among immigrants from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, who have brought their food traditions to this country and continue to transform the way America eats.”

This Tenement Talk is happening tonight, June 1 at 6:30 pm at the Museum Shop, 108 Orchard Street at Delancey. Call 212-982-8420 for questions or to pre-order a copy of the book.

-posted by Devin

Articles from around the web and on the newstand

The Forward looks at 97 Orchard Street: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York City Tenement. This new book, a culinary history of immigrant foodways in America, is centered around some of the families who lived in our tenement. You'll recognize names like Baldizzi and Moore, but the author also talks about the Glockners, who were the original landlords and usually only get a passing mention on our tours ("this six-story tenement was built by German-born tailor Lukas Glockner in 1863..."). Read about what working-class people who lived in New York might have eaten based on their religion, ethnicity, and era in which they lived.
[Read the article]

The City Room blog has a slideshow of images by Rebecca Lepkoff, a photographer who roamed the Lower East Side in the 1940s and 50s. She photographed a dynamic and diverse neighborhood and was especially good at capturing the people who lived here. Ms. Lepkoff is now 94 years old, and she'll be at Tenement Talks tonight to talk about her experiences and her art.
[See the slideshow]

The Village Voice profiles two tenements on Delancey Street which have been the site of old tenant / new tenant / landlord fights in recent years. The author checks in with the building owner, the newcomers, and the longterm residents, looking at neighborhood change and what it means for everyone. It's a little window into the Lower East Side today.
[Read the article]

New York magazine traces the legend of Annie Moore, the first immigrant to be processed through Ellis Island in 1892, when the facility first opened its doors.
[Read the article]

Food Wars @ 97 Orchard Street

A few months ago the Travel Channel show "Food Wars" filmed a scene at the Tenement Museum. For the episode pitting the pastrami of Second Avenue Deli against that of Katz's, the producers wanted a "meeting of the minds" to take place somewhere on the Lower East Side - a place where the owners of the two restaurants could meet to discuss the rules of the contest. Because of our connection to the history of the neighborhood, the Tenement Museum was a perfect choice!

Any film or tv producers out there who might be reading this know that it's pretty hard to shoot inside 97 Orchard Street. For one thing, it's dark - almost every film shoot requires extra lighting. It's also busy all day, every day, with the hundreds of school kids, tour groups, and public visitors who come to see the museum daily. For a film crew with a tight schedule, that usually means we can't accommodate the production. But for the "Food Wars" crew, we worked out a great alternative - filming on the roof!

You can see in the background the lovely streetscape of Allen Street. It was cold and rainy the day we filmed - you can see the talent wearing plastic rain smocks and carrying umbrellas - but the crew pushed through and got the scene they needed. It was fun to meet the owners & operators of both iconic delis, who swapped gossip about other restaurateurs, DOH inspections, and the Lower East Side back in the day.

You can watch some video snippets from the episode here, and catch the show on The Travel Channel to find out who won the big showdown!

- posted by Kate

From the Collection

Found at 97 Orchard Street in 2008.

"Modified Milk" and Lower East Side Dispensaries

When was the technology necessary to pasteurize milk made available in New York City?

Although New York City did not make pasteurizing milk mandatory until 1912, city residents had access to milk made safe by the technology almost two decades earlier. The doctor Henry Koplik's research in bacteriology led him to open a milk dispensary on the Lower East Side in 1889, probably the first in the nation. Philanthropist Nathan Strauss founded an early infant milk depot in 1893 on the East Third Street Pier. In response to high demand, subsequent depots were opened, including those in Tompkins Square Park and Seward Park on the Lower East Side.

According to a December 8, 1901 New York Times article (pdf), "a milk laboratory may be likened to a pharmacy where a supply of the finest drugs obtainable is kept on hand, to be combined in any variety or quantity as the prescriptions of physicians may demand." Sometimes milk was mashed with bread or jam, as "prescribed" by the doctor.

At the sterilization labs, milk was heated to 157 degrees Fahrenheit for twenty-five minutes and then rapidly cooled to 40 degrees. This process, Strauss’ doctors claimed, “kills all noxious germs and preserves the nutritious quality.”

The 1901 Times article mentions the costliness of this milk, "from $6 a month at the beginning" of a baby's life to close to $25 as he or she grew older and ate more. Dispensaries set up amongst the poor to provide medical care started offering this modified milk free or at a low cost. The Good Samaritan Dispensary at 75 Essex Street housed one such facility. Dubbed a "modified milk laboratory," it claimed to be "the first in the country to engage in the preparation of sterilized or modified milk for the children of the poor." (NYT, 5/12/1899)

Bringing milk to the children of the Lower East Side proved invaluable to their overall health, especially in the summertime, when food easily spoiled. An 1897 article describes this work as "an absolute necessity, and an incalculable boon to poor mothers who formerly were unable to procure safe food for children in hot weather."

The Good Samaritan Dispensary, formerly known as the Eastern Dispensary, was at the forefront of providing child health services to the working poor. Although Eastern Dispensary doctors had been working in the neighborhood since 1832, the operation received some much needed support in the 1880s, which seems to have led to its eventual name change.

Upon her death in 1882, a Miss Sarah Burr donated roughly $3 million dollars to various charities. In her will she earmarked $200,000 for "the founding and support of a dispensary in the City of New York, to be called 'The Good Samaritan Dispensary,' for the purpose of giving medical aid and advice to the indigent in the city of New York." (British Medical Journal, 4/29/1882).

Although nephews and nieces attempted to make this will null and void by reason of infirmary (apparently Miss Burr was a bit senile in her old age - in court testimony, witnesses stated she would often forget who they were or forget to pay them for services, and that her dress was "untidy"), in December, 1883, the judge ruled in favor of the various hospitals and charities, and the money was distributed according to the original will. In 1890, a cornerstone for a new building was laid near the site of the Eastern Dispensary (more on that building's history tomorrow).

The doctor Henry Koplik was instrumental in bringing safe milk to the neighborhood. Born in New York in 1859, Koplik was educated here and in Europe and in 1887 became Attending Physician at the new Good Samaritan Dispensary. He specialized in pediatric medicine and bacteriological research and went on to spend most of his career at Mt. Sinai Hospital. According to his 1927 obituary, "the fundamental subjects on hygiene and child welfare occupied much of his thought."

On January 1, 1912, a new ordinance went into effect requiring all milk sold in the city to be pasteurized and to be marked as such (as today, debates raged among the scientific communities, farmers, and doctors about the potential loss of nutrients from pasteurization - after 1906, it was illegal to sell pasteurized milk without it being so labeled, so that the consumer understood what they were purchasing). Death rates among children and infants dropped in the coming years, and no doubt more stringent regulations in the food production industry (along with improved technology and other sanitary reforms) helped to make this possible.

The clinic closed in 1955/56, and the building sat empty for a number of years. Tomorrow, more on the history of 75 Essex Street, including the history of Eisner Brothers, the business which has occupied the building since 1971.

(Top: June 22, 1897 New York Times article. Courtesy The New York Times Archive. Above: Dr. Koplik. Public Domain)

- Posted by Kate Stober, with thanks to Dave Favaloro

Mystery Object Revealed

Yesterday we posted a mysterious pink lumpy object and asked you to guess what it was. Well, drumroll, please...

It's a challah!

Curatorial and education department staff are busy updating elements of the Piecing it Together tour. Right now the Rogarshevsky family apartment depicts the Shiva of Abraham Rogarshevky in 1918, but next year, the museum will change the exhibit so that it depicts a typical Sabbath day in 1916.

The Sabbath table at that time would have include two loaves of challah bread. As food and drink are not permitted inside the museum (yay integrated pest management!), Collections Manager Derya turned to Iwasaki Images of America, which makes reproduction foods for restaurants, supermarkets, and - museums!

To make a bread, we had to send a sample to the company. Annie, our VP of Education, picked one up on Grand Street  and took it home for a week to harden. (The bread had to be dried out before a mold could be cast.) After a week, the challah bread was mailed from the Lower East Side to Iwasaki Images’ California studio, where they coated it pink putty and made a mold!

We were lucky enough that the excellent Ron documented the process and sent us some photos. Behold - how a reproduction challah is born:

First, you make a mold out of a real challah bread.

Then you pour in the plastic molding agent and let it harden. The breads fresh out of their little mold "oven" are surprisingly life like.

They get a layer of shiny gloss and then a layer of light yellow that looks rather like an egg wash.

Next, they are spray painted.

And voila - we have bread!

You can see the new bread on the Piecing it Together tour sometime in the near future. (The bread will not be available to sign autographs.)

Thanks to Iwasaki Images for all the photos.

- Posted by Kate & Derya