hot cross buns at the kosher bakery (Facebook 2/3/10)

February 3, 2010 at 10:47pm - additions 12/25/13

(first two images: gerritsenbeach.net)

Crystal Bakery (kosher) in Brooklyn last week... I notice that the icing on the "hot cross buns" have a variable amoeba shape.

The counter person is wearing hijab. I slyly inform her that the buns are "Christian," and that the icing is supposed to be in the form of a cross.

In walks the confectionery baker - a Mexican - who explains: The cross is added only for "holidays," during which period the nuts in the current product will be omitted.
 

Crystal is the Turkish-owned reincarnation of the famed Leon's Bakery.  (Which was full of rat turds when they bought it, a clerk whispers to me.)   Crystal continues the old traditions, but with a few subtle changes that can be expected whenever an alien race takes control of a planet.

For instance, in walks a customer asking for pumpernickel.  I'm sorry but we don't make pumpernickel, says the baker.  The customer is like WTF? - stunned and insulted at the same time, in a way that only a New Yorker can pull off - and then storms out.  But if the baker had told him the whole story, the guy might have gone berserk.  Actually, the baker refuses to make pumpernickel, because he regards the caramel coloring as unscrupulous fakery!

Kept to the side of the goodies favored by long-assimilated Jews are a few decidedly Turkish items.  Crystal was my first introduction to simitler.  When staying in the nearby projects, may favorite way to start the day was with a fresh simit and a big cup of thickly prepared Law's coffee - something that suggests the bakery's ties to Jersey.

As pretty as the place looked, the biggest part of the operation, and what really brought in the bucks, was through that little door in the back:  a massive wholesale "pide" production (not to be confused with "pita"), plus another large-scale production of "kosher danishes".


However, the days of the storefront were numbered after the laundromat next door closed and re-opened as a huge bagel shop.