The French may claim New Orleans French bread, but later immigrant bakers' influence on the city's bread-making traditions is undeniable. At the turn of the nineteenth century, a wave of Sicilian immigration to New Orleans left a lasting impact on the city's culture and economy. Nowhere is this more evident than the French Quarter, where traces of a once-thriving community known as "Little Palermo" are still etched in tiles and memories. Many of the Sicilians who arrived in New Orleans lived and worked in the French Quarter and forged a path in the commercial food business, unloading produce on the wharves, truck farming, and establishing grocery stores, restaurants, macaroni factories, and bakeries.

The 1891 City Directory lists a baker on St. Philip Street named Agostino Lombardo, who arrived in New Orleans from Trabia, outside of Palermo. [1, 2] There were almost 200 bakers in New Orleans at that time, most with German or French names. Agostino Lombardo was one of only two bakers at that time with an Italian last name (the other was Lorenzo Federico, a pasta maker, also on St. Philip Street). With his father Francesco and brother Filippo, Agostino Lombardo soon moved to 1210 Decatur Street, where "F. Lombardo and Sons Bakery" operated until declaring bankruptcy in 1941. [3]

Lombardo Bakery was one of the earliest recorded Italian bread bakeries in New Orleans. [4] With entrances facing both Decatur Street and French Market Place (previously Gallatin Street), Lombardo Bakery served the port, and the growing Sicilian community clustered near the bustling French Market. The grandson of Francesco Lombardo, Frank Lombardo, wondered in a 2015 oral history, "why do they call this the French Market? It's all Italians. Sicilians!" [5] This tight-knit community added their language, traditions, and foods to an already vibrant mix of New Orleans cultures. Other small, multi-generational Sicilian bakers such as Lanasa, Ancona, Aiovolasiti/Ace Bakery, Lovoi, Ruffino, Evola, Gendusa, Brocato, and LoGiudice/United Bakery, continued the French and American bread-making traditions of New Orleans. But they also added their own styles of bread to the mix, including the famous "poor boy loaf," St. Joseph's bread, braided sesame twist loaves, sfincione pizza, and the other well-known loaf, the muffuletta. Lombardo's bakery laid the groundwork for this dynasty of Sicilian bread-makers to follow.

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The intersection of St. Peter and Royal Streets is loud and busy with the passing hustle of to-go drinks, music, and tourists, making it hard to notice a faded patch of tile work outside the corner grocery store located at 701 Royal Street. However, this almost hidden marker is a powerful reminder of a long line of baking and confectionary businesses that once occupied the space and built on French and Spanish colonial baking traditions.

Mannessier’s Confectionary was the last of several bakeries to operate out of the location. An 1895 photograph shows the elegant and ornate interior of Mannessier’s, lined with the above-mentioned tilework. (Pictured below) According to owner Adolph LeClerc’s 1912 obituary, “he owned a confectionary at the time of his death, which is noted throughout the city as one of the landmarks of the old French section.” [1] The first recorded bakery to operate out of this location was Cadet’s Bakery (1789 to 1824). Frenchman Jacques Molon (or Moulon) established Cadet’s in a rear structure facing St. Peter Street and operated a mill "in which coarse flour, floated down the Mississippi River on flatboats, was reground to a finer grade – the grade that made the loaves Cadet sold over the counters of his corner store second to none. No other baker made a better brioche." [2]

Bakers and millers were among the first laborers sent by the French government to New Orleans in 1718, bringing the supplies and knowledge necessary to establish strong bread-making and bread-eating traditions. The first recorded commercial bakery in New Orleans was for a baker named Francois Lemelle (or Lemesle), who operated under the alias of “Bellegarde” at the corner of St. Ann and Chartres Streets. [3] These transplanted French bakers relied on standard methods and recipes. The types of bread baked resembled those popular in eighteenth-century France – large dense round loaves of mixed grains, smaller enriched loaves of white flour, and hard, long-lasting biscuits suitable for sea voyages. Bakeries often produced two qualities of bread, one of more refined quality and one of second quality, for those unable to afford the higher-priced loaves. This two-tiered bread system continued into the next century and reinforced bread as a marker of social class. [4] Eventually, the more elite white loaves of bread became the norm, replacing the large whole grain loaves. [5] Today, small artisan bakeries are again reversing the trend, returning to whole grain rustic loaves, but this time at an elevated status/price.

Bakeries in eighteenth-century New Orleans also resembled bakeries of the same time in France -- equipped with one or more wood-burning brick ovens, wooden peels to move the loaves in and out, long wooden dough troughs to mix the dough, and a workbench to weigh and shape loaves. By 1820, approximately sixty French bakers and confectioners operated in New Orleans close to the Mississippi River – a source for the water needed to make bread. Rainwater collected in outdoor cisterns provided an additional source of water. While the bread baked at Cadet’s bakery maintained a French identity, the bakery opened when New Orleans was under Spanish colonial control. The Spanish colonial forces had a lasting impact on bread-making history in New Orleans not through recipes but by implementing ordinances on the price of flour and the size and price of bread due to flour shortages. The Municipal Council of New Orleans also taxed the number of barrels of flour bakers consumed to collect funds for the city's illumination system. This tax replaced a system of taxation based on the number of chimneys on each building, obsolete following a fire in 1784 that destroyed many buildings and chimneys. [6] These government regulations contributed to the standardization of a loaf of bread in the city.

After Cadet’s bakery closed, several other bakers and confectioners operated in that same location (Leblanc, Lefevre, Tambelli, Vincent, Desbonnes and Bonnecayes, Mannessier, and LeClerc). [7] While always evolving and adapting, the bread-making traditions of New Orleans remain firmly established in the familiar identity of the early French bakers.

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Often visible in the background of historic images of the French Market, the three-story Italianate building with the “Garic’s Bakery" sign anchored the neighborhood. [1] Garic’s Bakery was once part of a bustling riverfront commercial corridor, closely intertwined with the nearby port and public farmers market, at times even taking on the name “French Market Bakery.” An 1893 newspaper article reported Garic’s bakery among the merchants that offered hurricane relief to the lower coast's oystermen, who traded near the French Market. [2]

Newspaper advertisements throughout the bakery’s existence reflected the busy, diverse, and ever-changing French Quarter neighborhood. The bakery was “always open,” operated 24 hours a day, serviced ships, and supplied loaves of bread and pastries to some of the city’s finest restaurants as well as the people who lived, shopped, and worked in the area. The bakery was referred to as the “French Italian Bakery” (that sold rye bread!) and adapted its products to customer demand. Some of the types of bread baked at Garic's over its almost one-hundred-year existence included hardtack for ships (a long-lasting biscuit that looks like a flat, dimpled disk, a staple since the colonial era), cap bread, French bread, Sicilian St. Joseph's bread, German rye and pumpernickel bread, and French biscuits.

When Lawson Garic opened his namesake bakery in 1885, close to 150 bakeries were listed in the New Orleans City Directory. Garic had previously managed Stiegler Bakery near the Treme Market and was a flour merchant to some of the city’s older bakeries, such as Chretien’s. Just as bakeries reflected the surrounding community's needs, they also had to adapt to outside forces such as sanitary laws and flour shortages. In the early 1900s, health ordinances required bakeries to wrap loaves and adjust loaf size, resulting in the standardization of products. [3] Records show that a rise in ingredients' cost resulted in a 1916 request to renegotiate Garic’s contract to deliver 17,000 pounds of bread a month to Charity hospital. [4] After a few years, Garic left the bakery business to pursue real estate ventures, but family members continued to operate the bakery until 1952. [5]

In the 1930s and 1940s, new challenges, such as industrialization, changing bread styles, and World War II labor shortages appeared. An article from 1933 reveals the growing popularity of "poor boy" loaves and machine-made sliced pan bread versus old-fashioned French bread and the French cap bread. The same article highlights Sterling Garic, a third-generation owner of Garic’s, as the last baker to produce hardtack. [6]

In 1952, the Gaudet family purchased Garic’s bakery and renamed it “Gaudet's French Market Bakery.” A few years later, the family leased the business to German baker Andreas Reising who operated the bakery as “Sunrise French Market Bakery.” In a 1958 Times-Picayune advertisement, Reising described the charm of the old Garic's bakery and its appeal to tourists in the changing French Quarter. Location still mattered, but the clientele had shifted once again – this time away from locals to tourists. He implored locals to follow the example of “visitors from all over the country, with Sunrise French Bread to be carried to their homes” to serve “daily at our table, n’est ce pas?” [7]

Following Sunrise Bakery, another baker, Adam Falkenstein, operated "French Market Bakery” at the site briefly in the early 1970s. In 1981, records show that the Gaudet family estate sold the property. The famous bakery that once served and profited from the busy French Market, port, and surrounding neighborhood transitioned to a gallery and souvenir shop. Garic’s history stands as an enduring testament to a bakery’s power to anchor and serve a community.

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In 2013, the reality cooking television series Top Chef filmed its eleventh season in New Orleans at 1231-33 Bourbon Street to revitalize the struggling restaurant and tourism industry following the effects of the 2010 BP oil spill on Gulf seafood. [1] While Top Chef showcased the charm and ingredients of the city’s cultural and culinary fame, another culinary story was buried just beneath the surface of the Hollywood film set. The pair of 1830s townhouses at 1231-33 Bourbon Street was also once home to two famous and now forgotten French bread bakeries: Chretien's bakery (approximately 1860-1911) and B.C. Francingues bakery (1911-1940).

One hundred years before Top Chef celebrated the glories of New Orleans food, local journalist and tour guide Flo Field highlighted the stories of Chretien's bakery and B.C. Francingues bakery in a 1913 newspaper article on New Orleans bread-making titled “How New Orleans Won Fame as Baker of Finest Bread Outside of France.” Field was a member of a small, vibrant, and short-lived bohemian social circle of writers, artists, journalists, preservationists, and hangers-on who settled in the French Quarter at the end of World War I, immersing themselves in the local scene. In addition to her work as a journalist, Field was also a playwright and the first French Quarter tour guide. [2] Field’s article gives a golden-hued “history of bread-making in Louisiana before the days of modern machinery, when the baker’s craft was a handicraft, indeed – fine loaves made with slave help – a few of the old bakeries still left.” [3] This romanticized and nostalgic story of “old-time” French bread is an example of an enduring narrative of the exceptionality of New Orleans shaped by authors in the post-Civil War years such as George Washington Cable, Lafcadio Hearn, and Lyle Saxon, spotlighting the notion of a disappearing and unique Creole culture. In bread-making, the narrative reinforced the importance of traditions begun in French and Spanish colonial New Orleans over other influences, including African, indigenous, and American.

In 1846, Eugene Chretien, owner of the earlier bakery, arrived in New Orleans from France at the age of twenty-two, coinciding with a population boom in the city. Records show that Chretien’s Bakery produced bread from before the Civil War until early in the 1900s. 1860 census records list Chretien as a baker located on Dumaine Street. [4] By 1865, Chretien appeared in the City Directory on Bourbon Street and was one of seventy bakers operating. [5] Field describes Chretien's bakery as one of the best bread bakeries of the time and tells the story of "Papa Jim," a formerly enslaved baker who worked for Chretien, lived nearby and trained multiple bakers. The 1860 census does not include Eugene Chretien's slave-holding records. But Field provides a glimpse at other antebellum bakeries that exploited enslaved labor, such as D’Aquin bakery, Bouny bakery, and Poincy bakery.

By 1867, the City Directory lists 170 bakeries in operation, more than double the number of bakeries just two years prior. [6] Chretien’s bakery was part of a vibrant neighborhood economy, operating “a flour warehouse, bread store, bakery and stable.” [7] In the early 1900s, bakeries often baked and delivered bread several times a day, both to homes and businesses. A former French Quarter resident recalled Chretien's bakery delivering long loaves of freshly baked bread daily to neighboring homes. [8] Gaston Alciatore, son of Antoine’s restaurant founder Antoine Alciatore, married into the Chretien family and is listed in census records as a baker at the same address as Chretien’s. It is possible that Chretien’s bakery also supplied the famous Antoine’s restaurant with its French bread.

In 1911, Bernard Francingues, another francophone, took over Chretien’s Bakery. The 1913 Field article described the manual labor of bread-making inside Francingues’ bakery: from mixing in long troughs to kneading, molding loaves, and baking in brick ovens -- methods similar to those presently revived as part of the artisan bread movement. Field provides rare photos from the Francingues bakery of the ovens and some of the lost loaves of bread from one hundred years ago. In the early twentieth century, before widespread industrialization, popular types of bread in New Orleans included pain chapeau (cap bread), pain tresse (French twist), flute (old-style French bread), loaf bread, and frog loaves (small rolls). While some people today may remember a few of these lost styles of bread, most only know today's New Orleans French bread style.

In 1942, the Francingues family transferred ownership of the Bourbon Street property to La Societe’ des Dames Hospitalieres, an organization founded after the Civil War that owned several properties and housed indigent war widows. The building later became a nursing home, active until Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 2010, developers renovated the site as luxury residences. The French Quarter has long been the symbol and epicenter of New Orleans. The property at 1231-33 Bourbon Street is an example of the layers of history found within the Vieux Carre. The transformation of the property – from bakery to reality television film set also reveals an intriguing chapter in the story of New Orleans French bread and the development of the French Quarter as a tourist destination.

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Before the Civil War, enslaved labor was an integral part of the commercial baking industry and the overall economy in New Orleans. While food historians note the role that French, Spanish, and Anglo colonial bakers played in shaping the city’s early bread-making traditions, they often exclude the contributions of enslaved Africans, Free People of Color, and Afro-Creoles from the narrative.[1] By tracing some of New Orleans' antebellum bread bakers' history and piecing together fragments from the archives (legal documents, census records, fugitive slave advertisements) a parallel story of forgotten forced labor unfolds.

Records show several prominent antebellum bakeries in the French Quarter, including those belonging to Louis D’Aquin, Widow Bouny, and Paul Desdunes Poincy, who relied on enslaved labor. [2] The above-mentioned bakery owners worked within a two-block radius of each other, respectively located at 840-842 Royal Street, 921-25 Chartres Street, and 530-36 Dumaine Street. They were members of an exodus from the West Indies to Louisiana in the 1790s and early 1800s following the Saint-Domingue revolution (present-day Haiti). This wave of refugees, referred to as the Foreign French, fortified a dwindling French presence in New Orleans in the face of encroaching Americanization. Many of these white refugees from the West Indies were involved in the trades and crafts, including baking. [3]

Enslavers profited from the skills of enslaved bakers but often placed little value on keeping families intact. Advertisements list for sale or lease “machinery and fixtures for carrying on the baking business with or without 6 negroes, all superior bakers.” [4] An 1847 auction advertisement in the Times-Picayune lists the names of twenty enslaved persons, all fluent in French and English, with a wide range of skills, including the following experienced bakers:

“Washington – aged 32 years, excellent baker, capable of taking charge of any bakery. Jacob – aged 27 years, good baker, salesman, and oven man. Bazile – aged 27, excellent miche baker and salesman, also, oven hand. Zeno – aged 24, baker, somewhat of a pastry cook, tailor and a remarkably handy boy. Barm – aged 24 years, excellent hard bread baker and understands the making of dough. Reuben – aged 25 years, excellent hard bread baker, hostler, coachman and valuable boy for taking care of horses. Monday – aged about 45 years, an excellent pastry maker, good confectioner and strictly honest.” [5]

An 1856 auction advertisement for the indebted “F. D’Aquin and Co.” bakery (the predecessor to Margaret Haughery’s Steam Bakery) lists the property for sale, including building leases, machinery, utensils, wagons, bread carts, horses, and thirty-eight enslaved persons, from age sixty-one to eighteen months. The advertisement lists the enslaved workers' skills, including oven repairman, flour sifter, dough mixer, yeast maker, carpenter, drayman, bread seller, and the types of bread baked (hard bread, soft bread, loaf bread). [6]

Fugitive slave advertisements illustrate the cruelty of slavery, with mention of injuries and physical bondage including chains, and neck and leg irons. Fugitive slave advertisements also show how enslaved bakery workers moved through the city and shared expert knowledge– both as vendors traversing the streets and markets, and as human property transferred between enslavers. Multiple listings suggest that some enslaved people who worked in bakeries made several attempts to escape bondage and that some even succeeded in their quest for self-emancipation. [7]

Labor is an essential foundation of the bread-making history of New Orleans. Whether brought into the business by family ties, economic necessity, or (in the case of slavery), force, the people who mixed dough, shoveled embers or hawked wares on the street reflect the complex multi-faceted history of New Orleans and its bread. Reinscribing enslaved people and their baking skills in this history demonstrates the significance of forced labor to the growth and development of one of the city’s most beloved and iconic industries.

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Katz & Besthoff, Ltd., later known as K&B, was a drug store chain headquartered in New Orleans throughout much of the 20th century. 1011 Canal Street was home to one of the chain's 186 storefronts.

In 1905, Gustave Katz and Sydney Besthoff opened the original Katz & Besthoff drugstore at 732 Canal Street. Gustave Katz was an established New Orleans pharmacist, and Sydney Besthoff was a successful drugstore owner from Memphis, Tennessee.

K&B was known for its signature “K&B Purple” branding. There are several stories that explain how the color branding came to be, all of which date from 1908 to 1911. According to one such story, early 19th century retailers wrapped customer purchases in paper and tie it into a bundle for them to carry home. In 1911, Sydney Besthoff’s wife was shopping to buy wrapping paper for the K&B stores. Money was tight in those early years and ways to save money on operating costs were important. She came across some purple wrapping paper that was on sale because no one wanted such an outlandish color. But, seeing the savings in costs, she secured as much of the paper as she could and returned to the store. The purple paper soon became a K&B slogan: “If it’s purple on the outside, it’s only the BEST from Katz and BESThoff on the inside.”

Katz and Besthoff develop a business that grew into a popular part of New Orleans culture with multiple drugstores throughout the city. In 1926, Sydney Besthoff died of a heart attack, and his son, Sydney Besthoff III, became more involved in the business. In 1940, after Gustave Katz passed away, the Besthoffs bought out the Katz Family’s stake in the business.

By 1955, after 50 years of business, K&B operated eighteen stores. In the 1960s, after K&B’s expansive growth, the company’s corporate headquarters, then located at 900 Camp Street, relocated to larger offices at 1055 St. Charles Avenue. The new office space was initially leased from the John Hancock Insurance Company. In the early 1970s, K&B purchased the building from John Hancock and renamed the site “K&B Plaza.”

In 1997, Rite Aid purchased the entire K&B drug store chain, including 186 stores located in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, and Texas. The Besthoff family still occupies offices at 1055 St. Charles Avenue where they manage real estate, art collections, and other family interests.

Since selling K&B, the Besthoff families have engaged in philanthropic endeavors in New Orleans. In the 1980s, the Bestoffs donated the vacant K&B headquarters and warehouse at 900 Camp Street to form the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center. The Besthoff family has also donated substantial artworks to many venues in the City of New Orleans including The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, which adjoins the New Orleans Museum of Art.

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In 1952, Lawrence Sintes Sr. opened Sintes Boat Works on the edge of Orleans Marina in Lake Pontchartrain with his oldest son, Lawrence Sintes Jr. The Sintes family’s move to the area, known as the West End neighborhood, coincided with a re-emergence of resorts, restaurants, and amusement rides on the lakefront that drew more tourists and locals to Lake Pontchartrain’s coastal neighborhoods.

The completion of the 1926 Lakefront Land Reclamation Project expanded the amount of habitable West End property and led to an increase in the neighborhood’s population. It was on this reclaimed land that the Sintes family laid the foundations for their home and business. When Sintes Boat Works first opened, Lawrence Sintes Jr. and his father constructed wooden boats, but they soon transitioned to repairing boats harbored in Lake Pontchartrain.

Living and working in the West End for four generations, the Sintes family has experienced significant changes to their neighborhood, from natural disasters displacing community members, to the slow loss of uninhabited land to condominiums. In order to ensure the business’s ongoing success, Lawrence Sintes Jr. and his younger brother, David “Dave” Sintes, embraced modern boat construction technologies. Dave Sintes Jr. introduced modern computer technology to enable the business to construct better boats at a faster pace, while Lawrence Sintes Jr. continued to do what the Sinteses are known for- providing reliable and expert repairs. In 1981, Lawrence Sintes Jr.’s son, Steve Sintes Sr., was the third generation to join the family boatyard, ensuring that Sintes Boat Works would continue well into the future.

Boatbuilding is a Sintes family tradition that has gone on longer than anyone in the family can remember. They are masters of their craft. The Sintes family has left their mark on every boat they have built and repaired. Through their business, the Sintes family has helped the West End’s maritime lake community thrive.

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