Some Bakery History
Here's an item I just scavenged out of my memory.
I grew up during the 1950's in a mostly immigrant, Jewish neighborhood in Cleveland. Our next door neighbors, who I'll call Mr and Mrs Jakov (not their real names) owned and operated a small Jewish bakery on Union Avenue, a mostly African American neighborhood which had once been the heart of the city's Jewish life in the 1930's and 1940's. Union Ave. had changed and our neighbors, now tired and middle age, had neither the money or the energy to follow the Jewish migration uptown.
Other things were changing as well. A few forward thinking supermarket owners were opening superstores: grocery stores with in store delis and bakeries. One of the most progressive of them was the Fazio chain of stores. Mr. Jakov accepted an offer from Fazios to close his small shop and work as a master baker for that company. He took with him his many years of experience as well as his recipes and knowledge.
He later related to my father that other former small bake shop had owners gone to work there and had contributed their recipes as well.
For the next couple of decades Fazios as well as a couple of other local supermarkets had superb bread of all sorts in their bakeries. Now just about all of these markets are gone, absorbed into bigger out of town chains. The breads in those in store bakeries are the same mass produced loaves that everyone else sells.
For a few years, though, you really could get a good loaf of rye or Italian bread at a supermarket around here. The taste may have reminded you of a small, family bakery on Union Ave.