Three Loaves of Bread and a Giggle:
Benjamin Franklin met his future wife Deborah Reed in 1723 on the day that he first arrived in Philadelphia, at age 17, hungry, and nearly penniless. He had run away from Boston and a printing apprenticeship under his overbearing brother and vowed to make a living on his own. According to his autobiography, he stopped at a bakery and asked for whatever three pennies would buy him in bread and was surprised that instead of the hard biscuits he would have gotten in Boston, the baker handed him three large puffy loaves of bread. Out on the street, he tucked a loaf under each arm and started eating the third as he set off in search of lodging. Fatefully, he passed home of John Read where daughter Deborah was standing in a doorway. For her part, the spectacle of this disheveled young man lumbering down the street with those loaves of bread tucked under his arms was so comical that Deborah audibly laughed. Her bemusement stopped him in his tracks, but undeterred by what anyone else might think rude, he asked her if she knew where he could find a place to stay. In fact, there was a room open in her father’s house. And thus began their relationship—all because of a giggle and three loaves of bread.
To read more from the letters between Ben Franklin and Deborah Read Franklin, visit the website for the National Archives’s “Founders Online.” The following link will take you directly to the National Archive’s digital collection of the correspondence between the Franklins: https://founders.archives.gov/search/Correspondent%3A%22Franklin%2C%20Deborah%22%20Correspondent%3A%22Franklin%2C%20Benjamin%22
Referenced in this episode is Ray Katherine Eighmey’s 2018 culinary biography, Stirring the Pot with Benjamin Franklin: A Founding Father’s Culinary Adventures, which is available on Amazon and through your local booksellers.
