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FARE OF THE COUNTRY: Sweet
Bread, Portuguese Style
May 17, 1987
By Betsy Wade
BETSY WADE writes the Practical Traveler Column.
Some Sunday mornings in the country, when work does not call,
we set out the margarine, the strawberry jam and the apple
butter, and on occasion the Portuguese marmalade. We pour coffee
and then we start slicing our loaf of massa sovada, Portuguese
sweet bread, and dropping the slices into the toaster. By the
time a morning haze has burned off down the way at Napatree
Point, R.I., the loaf is gone. The creases of the Sunday papers
are filled with crumbs and the tablecloth is sticky and, in the
days when our sons were young, so were the floor and the
funnies.
Such orgies remind me of my first days buying Portuguese
bread, when I was a teen-ager sailing in a chartered boat with
my father and uncle. I saw a sign in a grocery window, probably
in the Elizabeth Islands in Massachusetts, although it may have
been Rhode Island: ''Portuguese sweet bread today.'' I pointed
to the sign and said I'd take some, not being very sure if it
was actually bread or something that should be bought from a
butcher. After that, my fellow yachtsmen suggested that perhaps
I might look for another loaf on the next trip ashore. By
autumn, it became a private joke: Betsy's passion for sweet
bread, although we all knew it was the grown-up men, not a
weight-anxious teen-ager, who could shovel it away best.
In those days, this bread was baked only in small family
bakeries, or by women who sold it themselves or provided a few
loaves at a time to an outlet in their village. This sort of
enterprise continues, but recently a wider taste for ethnic
foods, or perhaps preoccupation of the family cook or the high
price of the ingredients at the retail level, stimulated a
number of bakeries in Portuguese areas of settlement in Rhode
Island and Massachusetts to start to bake and distribute sweet
bread commercially. Among others, I have noticed the products of
the Westerly Bakery in Rhode Island, the Prim Rose Bakery in
Tiverton, R.I., and Faria's Bakery in Fall River, Mass.
Anthony D. Ribeiro's Westerly Bakery bakes 100 loaves at a
batch, three times a week. Mary Santos, just across the river in
Pawcatuck, Conn., raises a batch of 16 loaves in the same big
enamel pan her grandmother used and spends a day baking them a
few at a time in the oven in her kitchen.
The Westerly Bakery's bread goes out by truck to groceries as
far west as Niantic, Conn., and as far east as Charlestown,
R.I., and into Hope Valley. Mrs. Santos's bread, except for the
loaves she keeps for her family, is picked up by an owner of
Camacho's store in Stonington, Conn., to be sold there. When the
supply runs low, Rose Camacho Hirsch calls Mrs. Santos, who gets
the pan out of the closet and prepares to bake again.
Details, details. The real difference between the two bakers
is in the recipe. Mr. Ribeiro uses his father's recipe and
produces a light, puffy one-pound round loaf and round rolls.
The bread is kin to many Easter breads, or some brioches. Mrs.
Santos uses the recipe of her mother, Mary Soares, who got it
from her mother, Adeline Mattos, and the bread is firm and
even-textured, with a reassuring solidity. You can give a
pound-and-a-half loaf of Mrs. Santos's bread a vigorous pat, and
it will stand firm. Her loaves are generally rectangular,
because the slices go into the toaster better, and Mrs. Santos's
family likes its sweet bread toasted.
She began baking professionally about 10 years ago, she says.
She had been baking for her family, including her husband,
Kenneth, a commercial fisherman, and a gift loaf to a friend
brought a recommendation that she offer it through a fancy food
shop in Stonington. She did. When the owner of that shop died,
she got a request from Camacho's at 69 Water Street, and she has
been supplying Camacho's for six years or so. The window of the
store, which is open all week except for Sunday afternoon, bears
a sign in Mrs. Hirsch's calligraphy offering ''masa de seveda,''
Portuguese marmalade and amendoas, or almonds. Mrs. Santos's
bread, which is stored in the refrigerator, but is not frozen,
costs $4.75 a loaf. The number at Camacho's is 203-535-1057.
Mr. Ribeiro's bakery was preparing sweet bread only for
holidays - Easter, Christmas and the Festival of the Holy Ghost
- until about 10 years ago, he says. Then the demand picked up
and the 300 loaves a week now go out with the bakery's Vienna,
French and Italian bread and its popular grinder rolls. The
one-pound loaf of his Portuguese sweet bread retails for $1.49.
If you want to experience the diversity of family recipes, go
to the annual Festa do Espirito Santo, the Festival of the Holy
Ghost, over the Labor Day weekend in Stonington. The donation of
many member families to the support of the festival is tres
bolos, understood to mean three loaves of homebaked sweet bread
or the equivalent value in something else - lobsters or crabs or
meringues.
The contributions are accepted at the Holy Ghost Society hall
at 26 Main Street and are displayed in the room with the silver
crown that is the focus of the festival. Turned on their sides
for display, the loaves cover many tables and fill many baskets.
Then, on Saturday afternoon and on Sunday after the midday
feeding of the people, bread of every possible shape and size is
held aloft in the side yard and sold to the highest bidder, and
it's not cheap because this is a labor of love.
We always buy a big loaf, bidding for Frederick Souza's
because he is a friend. But his work is popular and sometimes we
branch out. In no case will we do without a Souza loaf, though,
because Evelyn Nichols Souza, Freddy's aunt by marriage, who
proclaims herself a Yankee, is finally getting the results she
wants out of a recipe from the family of her husband, Louis, and
she always leaves us a gift on her way to the Holy Ghost parade.
This is one sort of bread where oversupply is not a problem; if
you have any left over, sweet bread makes the finest French
toast going.
The Westerly Bakery, a modest place at 54 Spruce Street,
sells directly to the public only on Sunday morning, from 6 A.M.
to 1 P.M. If you want to buy the sweet bread there, you should
call in advance and order it: 401-596-5268. But many groceries
in the area carry it all week long, as well as Prim Rose and
Faria's versions. Sandy's fruit market, which has branches at 15
Post Road on the eastern side of Westerly (401-596-2004) and in
Mystic, Conn., (203-536-0044) at 28 East Main downtown near the
post office, sells a selection of Portuguese bakery products
from various bakeries. One version from Faria's is a perfect
example of adaptation: Big, hefty muffins that look and behave
like English muffins with a Portuguese soul.
Copyright 2006. The New York Times Company. All rights
reserved.
FARE OF THE COUNTRY: Sweet Bread, Portuguese Style,
column., BETSY WADE, BETSY WADE writes the Practical Traveler.
New York Times (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: May
17, 1987. p. A.6
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