That’s Good Bread.

A panetteria sells warm relief by the dozen in Boston’s North End

By Brooke Jackson-Glidden

Hidden among the North End’s tourist traps and red sauce Italian joints is pure, gluten-full heaven: a ciabatta roll, one dollar, cash only. Bricco isn’t on Hanover, it has no accented heckler outside inviting passersby to tables in the window. Through a brick alleyway, behind bakery giants like Modern Pastry, down a flight of stairs, Bricco Paneteria is open.

Last year, I was standing outside St. Stephen’s Church on a Sunday. I apparently just missed Mass, and the priest (pastor? I never really understood the whole church thing) had already left for the day. I needed 500 words on St. Stephen’s Church and the funeral of Rose Kennedy for The BU News Service’s interactive map of Kennedy “haunts.” I stood outside the wooden doors of the church and asked fortysomethings in Red Sox sweatshirts, “Were you at Rose Kennedy’s funeral?”

No one — no one in the goddamned North End — was at Rose Kennedy’s funeral.

Three hours later, I gave up. I sat on the church steps, eventually walked inside and sat in a pew. I tried to think of God, see if he would go on record. “Rosie settled in marvelously, you know, she’s become a real member of the team.” I wouldn’t need much. It’s only 500 words.

It was starting to get late. I walked out of the church, and I was hit with that smell — the smell of freshly baked bread. It’s a stereotype for a reason. Freshly baked bread coats your nostrils with flour, it’s warm, it’s kind. A sign hangs between an alleyway on Hanover: “Freshly baked bread.” It wasn’t an interview, but it was good enough. It was hot, glutenous comfort — good enough for me.

I walked through the alleyway, down the stairs and emerged into a white bakery, angels in baseball caps and aprons and little pillows of ciabatta. I had a dollar on me, so I bought a loaf of bread off the baking sheet, ate it plain, took a deep breath.

I needed a cigarette.

I walked down Hanover until I found a little souvenir shop. I walked inside and bought a pack of Parliaments, asked the cashier if he remembers Rose Kennedy’s funeral.

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yep. I remember. Twenty years ago. It was twenty years ago. They filled the streets. Rena, you remember?”

“Yeah, I was there. They were there, the Kennedies. She grew up here, you know.”

Rena Buccino has lived in the North End her entire life, like Rose. At 86, she still runs an apartment building down the street, where she lived as a child and for most of her adult life. She knows this place unlike anyone.

I recorded our interview on my cell phone, grabbed my cigarettes and thanked the Boston native. Before I left, the man at the front asked, “Who’s bread is this?” I’d left my loaf at the front. With hustle and hunger I claimed my roll, half-eaten but still warm.

“Is that Bricco’s bread?” Joan asked. “That’s good bread.”