Bread at the circus: 300 years of New Orleans baking event

Come learn how and why bread like this has been baking every morning in New Orleans for nearly 300 years.

As historian Roger Baudier wrote, “The baking industry is regarded as the oldest business in the world. In New Orleans, founded in 1718, and for nearly 85 years the capital of a vast colonial empire, baking is also the oldest business.” We will understand the history of bakeries in New Orleans through photographs, discussions, tastings, samples, and interviews with current and former New Orleans bakers. We will look beyond and through the snow white slice of French Bread and Poor Boy bread; the event will dive into the rich history of the city and region, which was and is home to a vast quilt of bakeries, grains, flours, and styles of breads. This story, most importantly, will be told through the voices of the men and women who make our daily bread. It is important for their voices to be heard in the increasing cacophony of hyperboles and superlatives that distort the true creation of real food, by real working people.
This Tuesday, at 7pm, at Purveyor of Fine Wines with St. James Cheese Company, Gracious Bakery, James Smith of La Louisiana/Peristyle, and Sal LoGiudice of United Bakery. Mr. Sal whose shop closed under the water of Katrina: he will be graciously traveling from Pearl River to participate in this event.