Ellenville, New York
The raisin pumpernikel (this is a unique spelling, but who am I to argue?) deserves to be famous. Not just raisins but I'm sure there are dried cranberries and a variety of large seeds that I don't even recognize. There was also insanely wonderful-looking black Russian pumpernickel and round loaves of rye, but to my horror I found I had just four dollars cash in my wallet. So I bought the signature loaf, $2.50, and the next time I do a shooting expedition that takes me through Ellenville I'll be sure to have enough cash to buy half a dozen loaves of bread for the freezer.
When I was a little kid, at least once a month I'd ride on a Saturday morning with my father from our small house in Roseland, NJ, to his mother's tiny house in Newark, where he would fix the furnace or the plumbing or whatever else needed doing. On the way out, we would always stop at 'The Jewish Bakery' in Pleasantville, to buy a loaf of either black Russian pumpernickel or regular rye, and between the two of us very few slices made the round trip. Naturally, spoiled by this, I couldn't stand the "bread" that was served at the Roseland Elementary School cafeteria. To my delight, Cohen's had a bread slicer very much like, and certainly every bit as old, as the ones at the larger Pleasantville Bakery half a century ago.
