Variety Breads: Fast-Rising Sales

The 12th Earl of Sandwich is credited with producing the feat of luncheon engineering that put the pastrami between the rye.

Gary Strutin, a Manhattan retailer, is convinced the good earl had more in mind than keeping his plate clean.

“Good bread, great bread, the right bread makes a merely nicely concocted sandwich into something truly magnificent,” Strutin said.

Many Americans remain ho-hum sandwich eaters who see bread merely as a spatula, a flatbed, a convoy or a conveyor belt to get the bologna from countertop to gullet. But others, like Strutin, are more passionate about this stuff. To satisfy their hunger, specialty breads are rising across the country.

Nonwhite pan breads increased 47% in per-pound, per-capita consumption between 1982 and 1991, compared to a 0.1% increase in white bread consumption during the same years, according to U.S. Department of Commerce estimates. A 1991 consumer survey in Modern Baking Magazine found variety bread sales increased 19% between 1990 and 1991, with 70% of U.S. households buying them at least once a month.

Serious sandwich people are not surprised.

Aggie Markowitz, who owns Aggie’s Luncheonette on Houston Street in lower Manhattan, buys seven breads from five different suppliers. Of her 12 most popular sandwiches, she said, “The one I hear people kvelling over is the smoked mozzarella with pesto and roast peppers on Zito’s whole wheat Italian that we have pulled the center out of. And then, when you add pork to the roast peppers, it’s a cholesterol festival.”

At Sammy’s Roumanian, where the schmaltz flows like chicken soup and the chopped liver is eaten in scoops, Stan Zimmerman, the owner, goes to New Jersey to get just the right rye.

New York’s upper crust is becoming as big a part of this designer breadbasket as its ethnic contingent.

It’s de rigueur to have a custom-baked sesame bun for the 21 Club’s “more delicate” late-supper burger, a bargain at $18. The regular 21 burger--$24--is larger, so it’s served on what Michael LoMonaco, the executive chef, calls “a bread accompaniment”--a perfectly sized “slice of hearty country boule, toasted on the grill and brushed with olive oil.”

But it’s not just New Yorkers who get crusty about the correct sandwich bread. John Kasmarski, at the Chili Station in Cos Cob, Conn., is something of a local hero. Reputedly, he produces the hottest chili and the best cheese steaks this side of Philadelphia. When he took his cheese steaks to Park City, Utah, he flew New York wedge bread in to meet the meat because “35% of any sandwich is the bread.”

The White House, Atlantic City’s 41-year-old cheese steak institution, serves up 1,000 subs a day and buys from three old-style Italian bread makers who deliver freshly baked breads three times a day.

“It’s gotta be Italian bread, not French, because without that crust, whattya got?” said Pete Pileggi, the manager. At the White House, they “pull the center out of the bread, because that cakes up in your stomach, it’s all dough and that gives you more room for the meats.”

Chuck Curcio says bread is “super important” for the overstuffed heroes at Carmine’s new takeout shop on Manhattan’s Upper Westside. He and his partners “went to no less than maybe 15 different places in the Bronx and downtown Little Italy. We were eating sandwiches for two weeks before we got the right bread.”

Milton Parker, owner of New York’s Carnegie Deli, found the right bread years ago. “One local guy who bakes especially for me a special sweet and sour rye” delivers five times a day.”

Why?

“Did you ever go into a store and get a sandwich on a stale piece of bread? I don’t care what they got between that bread, however delicious it is, it’s lousy. Bread has to be just as fresh as the stuff that goes into it.”