How an old Philly bread factory inspired Bethlehem's holiday baking exhibit
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When Bethlehem museum curator Mark Steigelman needed inspiration for a new holiday exhibit, he turned to a story he knew well: his dad's flour-dusted college tales of working at the old Penn Fruit bread factory.
Why it matters: "Baked into Bethlehem" in Christmas City, USA sifts through the region's baking lineage, reaching back to Moravian settlers' lovefeasts — candlelit Christmas meals capped with sweetened buns baked in beehive ovens.
State of play: The exhibit, which opened last month at the Moravian Museum and the Kemerer Museum of Decorative Arts, highlights traditional Moravian baking practices and the rise of commercial baking.
- There's a recreated 1930s kitchen, a children's section featuring several of early 20th-century Easy-Bake ovens and an oral-history station where visitors can share family recipes bound for the Library of Congress.
- Photos from Mark Steigelman's father's memoir, "Baking Tuition," are woven throughout the exhibit, and R.A. Steigelman created the show's logo.
1 sweet thing: There's an old pie-rolling machine from the historic Groman's Bakery, whose holiday sugar cookie recipe endures to this day.
- A local woman would hike 2 miles from her South Bethlehem house across the Lehigh River every day to use the machine.
Flashback: As a young man, R.A. Steigelman spent two summers working at the Penn Fruit factory while attending the Philadelphia College of Art (later known as UArts). He took the job on a lark, hoping to escape the monotony of his previous gig as an ink tracer.
- The smell of bread hit him as soon as he'd step off the bus on Roosevelt Boulevard, nearly a mile from the factory.
- The factory was full of excitement and danger: a curmudgeonly crew of bakers, including a welterweight who'd shadow box to the clattering beat of breadhouse machinery and a charismatic ex-con who taught R.A. Steigelman how to make a blackjack, an improvised weapon made with a leather glove and dimes.
One worker would belt out Dean Martin lyrics — "Volare, oh, oh!" — at the top of his lungs.
- The crew once cranked out 33,000 loaves of bread during a brutal double-shift, and R.A. Steigelman would don a red parka while taking inventory inside the factory's massive ice box, where frozen dough was stored.
The workers would "fill his boots with flour," Mark Steigelman tells Axios about the playful hazing his dad endured. "It was rough. And my dad was also a Marine, so, you know, he could take a lot."
- Yes, but: R.A. Steigelman still fondly recalls those days — a brotherhood baked in 425-degree heat.
The bottom line: Those baking experiences — lighter than the factory grind — are the lasting memories families share this time of year.
If you go: The exhibit runs through July.