What Happens At The Church Party
...doesn't stay at the church party
Going to a reading in NYC often means standing in a crowd, craning your neck to catch a glimpse of the speaker or straining to hear above the ambient chatter. So, we’ve always wanted to host a large-scale reading with ample seating and great acoustics—somewhere everyone can settle in and fully absorb the work. Our sold-out Daily Bread reading at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Manhattan last week didn’t disappoint—thank you to the 450+ guests who attended! The church was a dream, from its roomy pews and dramatic stained glass to production designer Liz Midlowsky’s stale bread altar—not to mention the surreal magic of hearing Madonna’s Like a Virgin played on the church organ.
Of course, the real highlights were the readings: Sahir Ahmed saluted the bacon egg and cheese that helps New Yorkers “get this bread.” Mychal Denzel Smith waxed poetic on cutting off the crusts as a love language. Dayna Evans got real about the physical toll of baking as a profession before taking the 10 p.m. train back to Philly to wake up for her 5 a.m. shift at Downtime Bakery. Larissa Pham deconstructed the trad wife trope, while Nicolaia Rips delved into the peculiar pleasures of Breadfacing. Jun Chou introduced us to Nisreen Shehada and how her baking became a lifeline for survival in the Rafah refugee camp. Jordan Kisner took us behind the scenes of a gluten-debacle at a catholic church upstate. Breadface herself even made an appearance in the audience—incognito, of course.
After the readings finished, we all went down to the church basement to feast on treats: garlic bread pretzel stars and strawberry sugar pretzel petals from Zoe Kanan of Elbow Bakery, and fluffy slices of PB&J cake from Miro and Shilpa Uskokovic of Hani’s Bakery.
We couldn’t have done this event without the generous drinks donations from Nomadica, Straightaway Cocktails, Curious Elixirs, Slow & Low and especially sponsorship from Le Monde Gourmand, who gave out bottles of their deliciously scented Lait de Coco body oil and perfume to the first hundred guests who purchased a copy of Daily Bread. As an extra treat, they’re offering a special discount code to newsletter readers: 40% off your entire order with the code DAILYBREAD40.
The pitch call for our seventh issue, Forbidden Fruit, is now live! We’ve already received some incredible ideas and are accepting written submissions—essays, fiction, recipes, and more—through March 24, with a deadline of April 1 for visual artist portfolios. The pitch call is quite detailed, but if you’d like a deeper dive into how we conceptualize a theme and what kinds of submissions truly excite our editorial board, check out this recent episode of the TASTE podcast with Aliza and Tanya. We geek out over the editorial process, highlight some of our favorite pieces, and offer insight into how each issue comes to life.
We have a few more exciting Daily Bread activations in the works (ahem, oven), so watch this space for more soon.
Thanks for being here with us,
The Cake Zine team
Bake: A lamb cake, with instructions by Bronwen Wyatt.
Read: Hannah Goldfield on the origins of king cake and the bakers in New Orleans offering their own interpretations.
Meet: Bakers of all levels are coming together in Philly for a hang at Downtime Bakery on 3/24. RSVP here.
this event looks so amazing!! I want to try to come up with something for "forbidden fruit!" such a cool theme!