I’m proud to write for Casino Connection, the official magazine of Atlantic City casino employees. After all, I used to be one, and it gives me a nice platform to talk about Atlantic City history once a month. This month, it has a great article about something that makes Atlantic City unique–its Italian bread.
From Casino Connection:
The Atlantic City area is reputed to have some of the best Italian bread anywhere. Some credit the water. Others say it’s the unique recipe. Either way, I found myself standing outside Aversa’s Bakery in Brigantine one sunny morning, staring at its Spumoni-colored awning and wanting to bottle that smell of just-baked bread.The scent just got stronger as I walked through the retail storefront to the back room and confronted the warmth of the ovens. Long loaves of dough stood in precise formation on trays, stacked and ready to go. Bakers draped in white aprons alternately slid bread into the huge ovens or pulled out the golden loaves.
Owner Ralph Aversa is a bundle of energy. He never stops. He told the story of the bakery as he deep-fried something that could have been chicken parmesan. (Aversa sells not only bread, but European-style pastries, cookies and luncheon delicacies.)
The flour, according to Aversa, helps keep the bread soft without preservatives for a little longer. The bakery distributes throughout South Jersey to chain supermarkets and the casinos.
Frank Formica, third-generation owner and operator of Formica’s Bakery in the Ducktown area of Atlantic City, uses another local water source. “It’s the naturally softest, cleanest-tasting water in the world,” he said. “By pure luck when Dr. Jonathan Pitney discovered Atlantic City, he tapped into the Cohansic Aquifer under the Pine Barrens Preserve. It’s a huge basin of water under untouched forest. The cedar trees indigenous to the Pine Barrens keep the water slightly acidic so it’s impossible for dissolved solids to stay in the water.” According to Formica, “You can use more flour as a result.”
The bags of flour were stacked neatly above where, he explained, his grandmother once entertained guests eating her famous cookies in the kitchen. Formica’s goes through 500 hundred-pound bags a week to make between 15,000 and 30,000 loaves daily. They supply to more than 200 accounts from the casinos to supermarkets, small groceries, and the famous White House Sub Shop.
�There are no preservatives in the bread so they are made and consumed the same day,� he said. �We have a 30-mile direct delivery radius from Barnegat and Sea Isle up to Hammonton. It�s hard to beat our service. We�re out there four, five, six times a day with fresh bread.�
�There is also an extended market that�s starting to blossom,� he acknowledged, �from Cherry Hill to Philadelphia and Delaware. That bread is enhanced with some natural preservatives so it has a little more staying power.�
The bread itself is a recipe that�s been around for 2,000 years, he said. �Flour, salt, yeast and water, that�s it. It takes about three and a half or four hours to go from mixer to oven, depending on the humidity. It�s not timed. We check it by feel.�
So if anyone’s wondering why I’m always saying that Las Vegas sub shops like Capriotti’s, Jersey Mikes, and the Las Vegas Sub Shop “don’t get the bread right,” now you know.
Sacco’s on Ventnor Avenue sold Formica’s bread in sealed bags for a while; I used to snag a few and bring them back to LA with me (this is when I was in graduate school). A few years ago, though, they stopped.
If anyone has any ideas on how I can get real Atlantic City bread in Vegas, let me know.