The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters · American Public Media

837: The Universal Language of Bread with Tony Shalhoub and Maureen Abood

·50 min·4 clips

Tony Shalhoub reveals how bread became his antidote to modern stress and division.

Francis Lam opens by treating bread as a shared language. He sets up the conversation with Tony Shalhoub around the idea that bread comes as close as anything to a universal food, then carries that thought through sourdough in San Francisco, bagels in New York, tea bread in Ghana, injera in Eritrea, dense ryes in Scandinavia, and fluffy steamed buns in China. Shalhoub is clearly taken with that reach. The star of Monk and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel talks about being in New York for a second time and liking to try new places and different markets. He says the show took him to places he had never been before, which suits New York's constant sense of reinvention. Francis Lam follows that idea into the Irish side of bread. He brings up a woman who ran an Irish pub in the East Village and was raising six children while her husband worked away from home. When the pandemic hit, the pub closed and she had to scramble to keep things going. One thing she made in the kitchen at the bar was Irish soda bread. She also made Irish soda bread scones, and people loved them. Maureen Aboud joins the conversation with Lebanese Baking. She has a recipe for Prezatar Manaish, the bread Tony Shalhoub and Francis Lam snack on. The conversation keeps moving easily from place to place, from bread to family work to the pressures of the pandemic. By the end, Shalhoub sounds like a convert.

As heard by us

Bread links San Francisco, New York, Ghana, Eritrea, Scandinavia, China, and an East Village story in a warm, conversational food segment.

The episode treats bread as a genuine through line, moving from San Francisco sourdough to New York bagels and then widening to tea bread in Ghana, injera in Eritrea, dense ryes in Scandinavia, and fluffy steamed buns in China.

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Why you'd press play

If bread can stand in for the world and still land at the table, press play.

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