Anyone who loves po-boys will tell you the bread is the key to the sandwich. But anyone who spends much time contemplating the character of the po-boy may ask why its loaf is so commonly called French bread in New Orleans.
After all, with its golden, brittle exterior crust and airy interior, this is not bread many would confuse with the classic French baguette.
Jessica Carriere, left, and Paul Fournet make po'boy sandwiches for National Sandwich day in front of Gallier Hall on St. Charles Ave. in New Orleans, La. Friday, Nov. 1, 2019.
Why that’s so is a question reader Joe Rouse submitted for Curious Louisiana.
“What is the background of New Orleans French bread?” he asks. “We have been to Paris but saw nothing like that there.”
Advocate staff photo by Ian McNulty - Roast beef po-boys are part of the traditional menu at Parkway Bakery & Tavern in New Orleans, which rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina and has been growing since.
As is so often the case with Louisiana food, the back story here is a confluence of different peoples and traditions, coexisting and adapting in a new place. Fittingly, that starts with the French.
Jerry Banks with Leidenheimer Baking Co. makes a delivery of fresh bread to Pascal's Manale Restaurant on the morning that Dickie Brennan & Co. took on ownership. The restaurant opened for lunch again that day. (Staff photo by David Grunfeld, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
Michael Mizell-Nelson, the late University of New Orleans history professor, studied the development of New Orleans bread. In a chapter contributed to the 2009 book “New Orleans Cuisine,” he wrote that in the earliest colonial years, bread in New Orleans “resembled the standards of 18th century France,” which he described as heavy, round loaves, not the now-familiar baguette type.
Mizell-Nelson found that the distinctive local style evolved here as German and Austrian immigrants began to dominate local baking in the mid-19th century.
German to French
The most successful of those German bakers was George Leidenheimer, who started Leidenheimer Baking Co. in 1896. His great grandson Sandy Whann runs the company today, which is by far the largest maker of po-boy bread.
Bread is cut as a 500-foot po-boy is made in Lafayette Square on Friday, November 2, 2018. Leidenheimer Bakery, Blue Plate Mayonnaise and Chisesi Brothers meat packers joined forces to produce the po-boy in honor of National Sandwich Day. (Photo by Brett Duke, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Whann calls the evolution of Leidenheimer’s products a story of assimilation to the dominant French culture in New Orleans.
“If they were going to be successful, they were going to assimilate and so that probably went into the thinking of it,” Whann said. “And when World War I came along, they certainly weren’t going to call it German bread.”
Reising's bread, now produced by Leidenheimer Baking Co., sits on a grocery shelf next to Leidenheimer's own Zip bread.
Whann says the way the bread developed is a matter of local usage.
“The (colonial) French weren’t making po-boys, but when you start doing that, you’re adding gravy and seafood and you need a lighter loaf, almost more of an envelope,” he said. “You never want to fight with it. You want the crispness of the bread and the lightness of the interior to compliment what you're putting in, not overwhelm it.”
Roast beef po-boys are part of the traditional menu at Parkway Bakery & Tavern.
But is New Orleans French bread today really so different from bread in France?
Whann doesn’t think so. On his own travels in Paris, he seeks out top-rated bakeries, and notes a return to artisan styles in France after a period of more industrialized baking there, which is bringing back older bread styles. Some of those, he’s found, give striking similarities to what New Orleanians recognize as their own French bread.
“I think there’s a preconceived idea of what French bread is,” Whann said. “There are different types, I’ve found bread that’s very close to ours in Paris, with that lightness of the bread.”
Italian evolution
The cycle of cultural assimilation added another chapter when immigration from Italy, and specifically Sicily, ramped up late in the 1800s and planted many small Italian bakeries across the city. One of the very few surviving today is John Gendusa Bakery, which its namesake started in 1922.
John Gendusa (left) and his son Jason Gendusa represent the third and fourth generations to run their family bakery, one of the last producing the long, uniform loaves necessary to make po-boys. (Photo by Sophia Germer, NOLA.com, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
It had an influential role in the development of today’s po-boy loaf. It was John Gendusa himself who produced bread for the long-since-closed Martin Brothers restaurant, remembered as an early pioneer of the po-boy. His grandson, also named John Gendusa, says the restaurant asked for a loaf custom-designed for more efficient sandwich making.
STAFF PHOTO BY DAVID GRUNFELD Friday lunch at Galatoire's, October 2004. Legendary bread from Leidenheimer bakery is served. Featured in The Times-Picayune dining guide.
“Before, the loaves were fat in the middle and then tapered at the ends,” said the younger Gendusa. “They needed something that gave you the same sized sandwich anywhere you cut the loaf.”
The solution was to make a more uniformly plump loaf that ended in short knobs.
John Gendusa Bakery signature po-boy loaf, the starting point for po-boys. John Gendusa Bakery turned 100 this year. (Photo by Sophia Germer, NOLA.com, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
At John Gendusa Bakery, the new loaf was initially called “the special,” a name that remains on the packaging, along with the term “French bread.” These days, though, it’s universally recognized as po-boy bread.
So it goes today that you can have a sandwich of meatballs and red sauce or roast beef and gravy “on French” using a loaf from a bakery of German or Italian heritage. That might not sound precisely French, but it is very New Orleans.
