(whirring mixer)
- Cooking is like jazz because in cooking
you could just improvise all you want
whereas baking, is classical music,
we can't deviate from the program.
(people talking) (gentle slow music)
(laughing)
(gentle slow music)
Okay, this is our world famous olive bread.
There's no reason to change perfection. (laughs)
This is my father's legacy, right here. (chuckles)
And it turned out to be something
that people wait in lines for during the holiday.
Use a lot of olives here.
So the key is to really have a lot of olives in here.
I'm rolling 'em out 'cause when you do it like this,
you give the dough a little more time to rest
after you work it and then it makes it easier
for me to shape when I wanna make the braid.
I mean people come and buy 10 at a time.
It's like hard to keep 'em on the shelf.
With that small oven, on the holidays,
that oven turns into like a little house oven
because I'm baking two shelves of olives at a time.
We could do what we could do.
You know, I'm not gonna ruin the integrity of the bread
because I gotta rush it, I'm not gonna do it.
Take our time, you get it, you get it.
You gotta wait for you, you gotta wait for it.
You know, I don't want anybody walking away going,
"No, it wasn't good."
So sometimes the better things you wait for in life.
So.
And that's our beautiful olive bread.
- My name is Peter Madonia.
I am owner of Madonia Bakery which is where we are now,
family business that's been around for 101 years this year.
We do everything by hand here,
much the same way my grandfather did
when he came over from Sicily.
Like my business, there are a half a dozen businesses here
that are family-owned, same family-owned
that are 100 years old and the younger businesses
are 75 and 80 years old, same family.
To me, like you take this thing
and you put it in the middle
of your dinner table every night, it's deeply personal.
I may not be there with you, but it's deeply personal.
That's your family.
- I actually wanted to open my own restaurant,
but you know, my father and my brother were like,
"Aw, come on, come to the bakery."
And I was like, you know,
three generations like my grandfather,
my father and then my brother, I said,
"You know what, it's inevitable." (laughs)
I might as well just, why fight it?
And it took me a while.
It wasn't easy for me.
He used to make fun of me every day.
"Oh look at that, you roll terrible." (laughs)
It took me a lot of time.
You know, a lot of people come in, it's a natural thing,
I worked my ass off.
I practiced and I practiced and I practiced.
You know, watched videos and then I would just come everyday
and I would practice it and mixing was hard,
figuring out how much water,
it's a humid day, do I cut the water,
do I do this, do I add more flour?
All of a sudden, one day it just, it clicked.
Well you look at every cooking show nowadays,
they're doing it in a Dutch oven.
They're making it so, I mean yeah,
I mean people could do it, but to do that here,
never gonna happen. (chuckles)
It's just 250 pounds of flour a day,
a lot of eggs,
four cases a week, so 120 dozen a week, give or take,
100 pounds of butter a week, give or take.
Like a lot of bakeries will bake everything in the morning
and that's it for the day.
We sit there, we bake a little bit at a time
so everything's always coming out through the whole day
so people know they're always getting fresh hot bread.
I mean a lot of bakeries, they wanna charge you
12 or 13 dollars for a loaf of bread.
At one time, bread was a filler,
it was like supposed to be cheapest thing for people.
You know, they didn't have money to buy steak
and this and that, they had bread to,
they could fill themselves up on it.
I mean, it's bread, you know,
everybody should be able to afford it. (laughs)
Madonia Bakery is a bakery here in Arthur Avenue, the Bronx,
it's been around for 100 years.
It was opened by Peter's grandfather, Mario Madonia
and then about 25 years ago,
my father, Charlie, came down here
and became partners with Peter
and they started to build this place back up again
with all different types of bread and everything.
(gentle music)
My father, he's a happy-go-lucky guy.
You know, but he has his own thing,
he wants things the way he wants 'em and that's it.
Dads are tough, yeah, especially when they did it,
they want you to be the best that you can be at it, so.
He just started laying off me a little bit,
but I also put my nose to the grindstone
to make sure he didn't have anything to say. (laughs)
Because yeah, he's my biggest critic
when it comes to certain things, you know.
- My dad used to stand in the front of the store.
He came here four days a week 'til he was 90.
He would come and just, you know,
hang around, have a cup of coffee,
stay three or four hours, just watch,
but I watched him talk to people who were children
when he was here who are now, came in with their children.
You know, I'm only sorry
he didn't live long enough to see me come back.
'Cause that's all he needed,
but he knew, I think he knew, he knew in his head, you know?
He was here 90 years, you know, so, you know, excuse me.
He's a good guy.
- Honestly, I don't feel people work like they used to
and they really don't have the love and the passion
to wanna do it, you know.
They're not gonna love it as much as I love it.
It's my livelihood.
(cheerful soft music)