Proud of yourself for baking a double batch of gingerbread while snowed it last weekend? Prepare to be eclipsed.
We sent contributing editor Rachel Wharton over to the Brooklyn Heights home of Seth Unger to chronicle his family’s staggering tradition: baking 400 (yes, 400) loaves of pumpkin bread, to give as holiday gifts.
Seth, of Food Film Fest fame, used to bake all 400 loaves in—are you sitting down?—one day. Now he, his wife and their twin 6-year-olds Jane and Georgia split it up over a couple weekends.
Seth’s own father started baking copious quantities of pumpkin bread in Miami Beach, where he grew up, and Seth has taken on the challenge for the last decade. Unlike his father, he now bakes mini-loaves, and this year he opted to use all Sugar in the Raw, made in Brooklyn. (A sponsor of the Food Film Fest, of course.)
Together they measure out ingredients, turn on three Kitchenaids to blend batter, then bake, wrap, ribbon, sticker and label every loaf, with the girls responsible for keeping a tally.
Not only is it really clever, Rachel tells us—they just take a loaf or two when they see friends or go to a party, and some they deliver to the “nice” ones on their list—but it it’s also a wonderful way to get some family bonding time of your own. “I was totally inspired,” she says, “and left wondering what I might be able to make 300 of in a week and half.”
