Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/02/11/the-8-foot-long-loaf-of-bread-in-the-pioneer-women-episode-of-i-love-lucy-was-real-and-baked-by-union-made-bakery-in-los-angeles.html
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at the end of the show, all of the audience and cast/crew members were invited to eat the bread.
There’s something charming and homey about that. Apparently Ricky and Lucy made a lot of effort to make the audience comfortable in addition to creating a great viewing experience.
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Is it actually that unusual? Is the bread for something like a 6+ foot party sub actually baked as one loaf or made by cutting off the ends of smaller loaves and combining them? I never really thought about it much.
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Exactly how large is YOUR oven?!
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create the loaf in 2,000 different sections
my disappointment is in many sections
edit: ohhh, apparently the last one was at least baked contiguously? I need to find more information
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Depends on the bakery. Most do not have ovens large enough to bake a loaf that big. Not to mention needing a special pan to hold it.
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Those giant party subs from Subway and similar places are made by cutting shorter loaves of braided bread and arranging them end-to-end to look like a continuous loaf. There are ways to bake loaves longer than any ordinary oven but they’re usually reserved for people who are trying to break records and such (like the ones @tyroney mentioned above).
I don’t mean at home, I mean it’s the kind of thing that, growing up, people would often order from a pizzeria or deli for a party. I don’t know if that existed everywhere or if it was maybe a NY/Long Island thing?
FWIW my oven is a microwave convection oven, at the moment. Very little bread baking going on in it.
And, at a time when diversity on screen was reduced to seeing any rare character of color in a subservient capacity, I Love Lucy was the first television series to feature an interracial couple. Desi Arnaz, of course, was of Cuban descent (which was an initial concern by CBS).
So much going on there: It was Desi who wanted William Frawley brought on as Fred Mertz although CBS had concerns with Frawley’s history of alcoholism and personal clashes and how all that could affect his support of the shows, while Desi fought CBS for Frawley’s inclusion in the show in spite of the aforementioned… and Frawley’s racism (something that Desi may have not been aware of at the time of the hiring, but perhaps later and definitely along with on-stage signs of misogyny vis a vis Frawley’s treatment of Vivian Vance who despised him.)
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Even so, the show itself was a huge landmark in terms of inclusivity on television, much like Star Trek (the other show Desilu studios is most remembered for) was a huge deal for inclusion at the time even though some key people involved in the production were highly problematic as individuals.
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I’m not criticizing what was shown on TV or its ground-breaking influence (at least as eventually seen in the long run). The results speak for themselves. As to the relationship between Vance and Frawley, even that seemed to beneficially fuel the head-butting interactions required between their characters, although I’d guess that Vance would have wished the quality of the performances to be based on simply actors acting.
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I assume the article on Forbes was written by AI right? " Minus competition from cable and digital". Not sure there was much cable and digital back in the 50’s. I am not that old but I don’t think they streamed too much back then.
That was the joke point being made.
Ah I guess I am being a little slow today then. I had to go click on the Forbes article and still didn’t get it that way. What’s the difference between a good joke and a bad joke timing.
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