By Kathleen Vereen Dayton, The Sun News, Myrtle Beach, S.C. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
May 1--That aroma you smell as you drive along U.S. 17 in North Myrtle Beach might remind you of the old neighborhood, if you happen to be from McKees Rocks, Pa.
Yes, it really is Mancini's bread -- a staple of Pittsburgh restaurants -- slowly baking in a high-tech oven at the back of a little sports bar and restaurant called Oscar's.
Nestled alongside a miniature golf course and across the street from the Grand Prix Family Thrill Park, Oscar's now is home to thousands of loaves of Italian bread that get their start in a 77-year-old Pennsylvania bakery.
Just how the bread gets from there to here is a love story between a man and his bread.
'It's the best product I've ever tasted,' said Fred Williams, owner of Oscar's and a Pittsburgh native. 'I grew up on it.'
Williams, an Italian-Irish transplant, arrived on the Grand Strand 18 years ago. He liked his new home in North Myrtle Beach, but kept pining for his bread.
He finally dialed his old neighborhood bakery, Mancini's, to see if the establishment could supply his restaurant.
'I asked them, what if I need 5,000 loaves? When could I get it?' Williams said. 'They said, 'Tomorrow morning.' '
Williams hit the road in a rented freezer truck (he now owns his own freezer trailer), making a 12-hour trip to haul 1,500 partially-baked loaves and 500 frozen mounds of dough from their Pennsylvania birth place back to Oscar's.
Through a series of kitchen taste tests, Williams has found that having the dough partially baked at Mancini's and frozen for future baking at Oscar's is the best method of reproducing the beloved, crusty loaves.
'They wouldn't compromise the recipe for anything,' Williams said. 'First of all, it's all natural, no preservatives, no chemicals added to the yeast. It tastes like homemade bread.'
Mary Mancini Hartner, Mancini's president and owner, said the fact that no preservatives are used made transporting the bread in bulk to a faraway restaurant a challenge.
'He started out with the dough and I didn't think that would work,' Hartner said.
'Then we decided to [partially bake] it, he would take it back in the freezer, thaw it and finish baking it in his restaurant.'
The bakery, which employs 36 people, started Williams' order at 4 a.m. and it was on its way to North Myrtle Beach by midafternoon.
Williams built a freezer room onto the back of his kitchen to contain the bread, which is next placed in a proofer where the dough finishes to rise. The loaves finally go into an oven for 30 minutes. The entire process is repeated at least three times a day at Oscar's, which serves 70 types of sandwiches and goes through 40 or 50 loaves of Mancini's bread each day.
Mancini's, a family business started by Hartner's uncle, Jim Mancini, in 1926, still operates at its original location at the corner of Woodward and Sixth Avenues in McKees Rocks, six miles west of Pittsburgh.
The Mancini family has deep roots in the area, where all four of Hartner's grandparents settled after leaving the small town of San Eufemia a Maiella in the high mountains of Abruzzi, east of Rome.
Hartner said the family recipe, made from only seven simple ingredients, is a secret.
'It's crusty on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside, and has a very good taste,' Hartner said. 'When you have a sandwich on Mancini bread, the bread is just as important as what's on the inside.'
Williams said the bread has already brought customers to his pub, including four groups of golfers who read about the bread's north-south migration in a Pittsburgh newspaper.
Since Williams started his bread runs, he has hauled a cache of nearly 4,600 loaves to North Myrtle Beach.
As a child, Williams some times stood in line for the bread.
'On Saturday mornings, we'd go down for the bread, my uncle and I,' Williams said. 'It's in an old neighborhood, a very old building. They have a little retail store, and people would stand in line to get the bread.' Williams may never have to stand in a bread line again.
'I've got the bread,' he said.
'I'm happy.'
OSCAR'S
4101 Highway 17 South
North Myrtle Beach, S.C.
272-0707
MANCINI'S BAKERY
601 Woodward Ave.
McKees Rocks, PA
412-331-2291
www.mancinibread.com
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(c) 2003, The Sun News, Myrtle Beach, S.C. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
