Lev Saunders
great-grandson of Sam Rosen, grandson of Rita Rosen Poley
"I want you to know that I am a baker. My great grandfather, Sam Rosen, was a baker. An immigrant from Ukraine when he was ten years old, he came to own and operate a Jewish bakery in north Philadelphia for forty years of his life. Every single one of my cousins, my mother, my mother’s mother, and my mother’s father can tell me stories of the warmth and smell of the rising yeast and the challah fresh out of the oven which permeated through every atom of space in that building.
My Bubby still often recants to me tales of her grabbing still hot danishes and bagels on her way to school in the morning. I have no stories. I have no memory of my great-grandfather, Sam Rosen. How come I am the one doing the baking? I never had the experience of feeding the years old vat of sourdough starter daily, yet I still develop one in a mason jar above the fridge. I never watched my father, or grandfather pull a long wooden peel of bagels out of the massive blazing hearths, yet I still stretch the dough into those golden brown rings.
Where am I going with this? Nobody told me to pick up baking. As I grew up and experimented with recipes from the big yellow family cookbook, just as I still do today, it came to me the soul bending visceral satisfaction of kneading the dough, of watching the flour hydrate itself with the water which I have provided it, forming an ever more cohesive, wonderfully smelly sustenance. I have felt it for years now that bread nourishes more than the stomach. I have learned more from Sam Rosen than I ever thought I could."
Memories of making bagels with Marty and Sam Rosen
by Yehoshua Buch
"One late night they were really short-handed and needed help. By late night, I mean very late night. Bagels were made in the early hours of the morning. A large chunk of dough was ready when I came to work. The first job was to roll it out like a very long, thick salami-like shape on the bench. I watched as they did this.
Dad (Sam) would cut the roll into slices. Each slice would end up being precisely one bagel. Once in a while he would weigh the slices to check himself but they were always identical in weight without any adjustment.
Then he would take two pieces – one in each hand - and roll each of them into a long thin strip. He was the only one who could roll two at a time perfectly without any misses. Then he would flip one end and catch the other end so he could join the ends into a circle (bagel) in one motion. Marty and the other bakers could also do the two hand technique but not perfectly like Sam, who never made a mistake.
Then the bagels needed to be dipped briefly (maybe just a minute) into boiling hot water using only bare hands. The first time they asked me to help I could not fathom working with boiling water with bare hands, especially when I had to pull the bagels out of the boiling water. Putting them in was easy – just dump them.
Marty brought me a bucket of ice to keep plunging my hands into it when I could not stand the boiling water anymore ….. But all the others worked bare handed in the boiling water without ice or any other relief.
I remember the lines of Cadillac’s driven by men in pajamas to get their hot bagels just out of the oven in the early morning. Your mother (Ida Rosen) knew each of their orders by heart and had it ready for them. They did not even get out of their cars. Mom would send the bagels out to them.
I only did this once – they could never get me back again! The boiling water and late-night hours did me in."
A MEMORY
by Rita Rosen Poley
"My family moved to the bakery when I was just about two years old. All I knew about family life was lived “over the store.” The bakery operated 24/7 and for the first ten years of my life our tiny kitchen was on the first floor, wedged between the store and the bake shop. We never really had a private moment. But I loved every minute of it.
My parents made people happy with their delicious cakes and breads and with the welcoming atmosphere of the store. My mother was the public face of Rosen’s Famous Bakery and her warm, winning personality made the business seem like an extended family. To my mother, everyone who came to shop was family.
When I grew a little older, I developed friends away from 11th street. When I would visit their homes, I could not understand how they could live such quiet boring lives. When I married and had children of my own, I brought them to the bakery every minute I could so that they could soak up the magic my parents and brother had created."
A Memory by Shelly Rosen
I met Marty Rosen in 1960 at Temple University. When we started dating I learned that he lived on top of his parents' bakery on 11th street. I had never dated anyone who actually was a baker, let alone lived on top of the family bakery. It opened up a whole, new, wonderful world. We needed to walk through the store to reach the stairs to the family apartment. It was always exciting, full of activity 24/7, and smelled so great all the time. I laugh now remembering, in the beginning when I walked through the store, I simply smiled at the salespeople. I never spoke to them. Marty explained that they
are part of the Bakery Family and we not only say hello, but we also talk to them like family because they are our Bakery Family. The bakery never
closed and when we first got married in 1962, all we both wanted to do was leave our quiet, boring apartment and spend all our time in Logan at the bakery, with family.
Our married life totally revolved around the bakery and Rosen Family Celebrations. Every Friday night was a huge Shabbat Dinner where we all joined in to eat the most amazing Shabbat meal. How my mother-in-law worked all day in the store and also oversaw the cooking I will never understand. She was a fabulous, intuitive cook and a superb, self-taught saleswoman. I will close with how happy I am that I married Marty Rosen
and the greatest baking family, Rosen's Famous Bakery.
Shelly Rosen with Ida Rosen in the store (right)
A MEMORY from Phyllis Epstein
My memories of the bakery are sound and taste and smell. The bakery operated day and night so these sensations intruded upon sleep and waking hours. As young
grandchildren, my brothers and I might sleep over at the bakery and since our Bubbe and Zada lived over the bakery, the sound of metal bread racks in the alley moving and crashing kept us up all night. The whoop of the large bread mixer could dim the lights and disturb sleep, as could the family sharing a small meal in the middle of the night in the kitchen while on break from work.
The aroma of fresh baked rye bread cannot be translated into words. The shiny golden loaves, too hot to touch, radiated a salty sweetness that lingered in your clothes, your hair and my memory. Nothing compares. Wander back into the shop where the sour for dough bubbled alive, where the sweet cakes and icings met with the salty boiled bagels and bread. These smells collided and lingered and floated out into the street. And finally the taste of all of those handmade breads and cakes. What can compare to a hot loaf of rye bread cracked open out of the oven with butter fast melting, a bit of salt and too hot to eat.
The bakery is where I grew up with my brothers and the rest of the family. It was a place of warmth, love and also a bit of chaos. Downstairs in the store, customers would linger and chat. When the family kitchen was behind the store, customers would poke their heads in during dinner to check in. To reach the upstairs living apartment you had to walk through the store, greet the sales people, greet the customers and then, only then, climb your way upstairs. My Bubbe was in the center of the downstairs store and upstairs apartment. My Zada was the master of the shop, always in baker’s whites and often sitting at the bench writing his notes in a large book. When the kitchen and main bread shop traded places so that the big mixer went downstairs and made way for an upstairs kitchen, life centered around that big kitchen. Friday night dinners, Seders, Holiday Celebrations all took place there. Our family and all of the cousins, second cousins, aunts and uncles all gathered in this central place.
Logan was where we could walk to the fish store and watch the live carp in the fish tank; stop in at the cheese store; the butcher, or grab a slice of salami from the next door deli.
Around the corner each fall I went with my mother to buy new holiday clothes at the
dress shop that I seem to recall was in someone’s home. And memories of the dentist,
two doors away will hopefully remain buried.
We retain mementoes and memories from the bakery, and the photographs here help bring it all back. Thank you for creating this space to gather again in one place.
Phyllis Epstein
Phyllis with Marty Rosen, Ivan & Burt Horn
A MEMORY BY
LINDA GELLMAN
"My name is Linda Gellman . I am the niece of Ida and Sam Rosen, the owners of Rosen’s Famous Bakery. Rita Rosen Poley is my Cousin. She and I grew up in that bakery. As a young member of the family it afforded me many privileges. Including going behind the counter to pick out a goodie of my choice. While a store crowded with customers waiting for their number to be called watched me. As my Aunt Ida, who was the person who kept the store running smoothly did her best to lovingly hurry me along. I was allowed to go into heart of the bakery “The Shop”. I watched how the rolls and breads were made by hand , the jelly donut machine filling the donuts and the cupcakes being iced .
My favorite part of my visits into the shop was watching my Uncle Sam at the kettle pulling raw bagels out, then putting them into the oven on a long skinny board and pulling out those that were already baked. It was magical! To this day the smell of dough and baked goods takes me back to the those times. There was another privilege afforded to me. Along with Rita we were taught how to put together pastry and cake boxes needed for the store. To this day Rita and I are critical about how the bakery boxes of today look.
My fondest memory of the bakery were the spectacular challahs my Uncle Sam would make. On Jewish Holidays and family events Uncle Sam would make these large beautiful raisin challahs. One Sukkot Uncle Sam made a raisin challah for our Synagogue. It was so big and beautiful that it was put on a long board carried by two men from the shop to the Shul. Rita and I each held on to it. It made me feel as if I were a movie star as passersby stopped to gasped at its beauty All of my Aunt Ida’s brothers, Irv, Heshy and Mickey worked at the bakery in various capacities. As young girl it made me so proud to be part of this bakery and this family. As the name implies it was Famous."
