All successful bakeries are intimately linked with their cities, but none more so than Leidenheimer Baking Co. “The health of New Orleans and the health of Leidenheimer go together like a hand in a glove,” says Sandy Whann, president of the bakery. “When I talk about Leidenheimer, I talk about the city of New Orleans. You can't separate the two.”

George Leidenheimer, Whann's great grandfather, started the bakery in 1896 after he immigrated from Deisdesheim, Germany. The Leidenheimer family had been bakers in Germany, and George quickly established himself in New Orleans, producing the ethnic German breads of his culture.

Like the rest of the United States, the city was a melting pot of different cultures, which began to meld as the populations became “Americanized.” The dense, dark German breads that Leidenheimer Baking Co. had been producing fell out of fashion, but the bakery adapted and became a large supplier of the lighter French breads that were in demand. This bread would become the basis of the famous po-boy, a New Orleans icon. Po-boy refers to both the bread and the actual sandwich. Legend has it that the po-boy (it is not referred to as a sandwich in New Orleans, instead it is simply called a po-boy) came about during a streetcar conductor strike in 1929. Former streetcar conductors Benny and Clovis Martin had opened a sandwich shop and vowed to feed all striking workers who came to their shop.

The solution to feed the workers without going bankrupt was a sandwich made from a French baguette. However, the baguette's traditional shape with its tapered ends created sandwiches that were unequal in size. The solution: a symmetrical, 32-in. loaf about 3 in. wide from end to end that could be cut into equal 8-in. or 12-in. sandwiches. As the workers would come in for the sandwich, the brothers would say, “Here comes another one of those po' boys, give them something to eat,” Whann says.

Po-boy fillings include hot roast beef with gravy, ham and cheese, fried seafood (oysters, shrimp, soft-shell crab or catfish), hot sausage, meatballs and even French fries. A “dressed” po-boy has lettuce, tomatoes and mayonnaise.

Po-boys are popular with all demographic groups, and Leidenheimer Baking Co. is a primary supplier of the po-boy in the New Orleans region. “People ask how the bread itself developed, and how we got the light airy loaves,” Whann says. “I think as people started putting fried seafood on bread for sandwiches, they couldn't have a heavy, dense, gummy bread. They had to have something light that accentuated the seafood as opposed to covering it up.” The lighter, crispy crust French-style bread was the answer.

The bakery also made a name for itself by supplying the bread for another popular New Orleans sandwich, the muffuletta (Sicilian for round). Salvatore Lupo invented the original muffuletta in 1906 at Central Grocery. A traditional muffuletta is stuffed with ham, salami, cheese and marinated olive salad. Other versions include seafood, turkey or eggplant. The bread, a sesame seed-covered round loaf, has to remain crusty even as it soaks up the olive oil. Leidenheimer produces 6-in., 9-in. and cocktail-size muffulettas.

“Our business has changed a little over the years, but we still are the primary provider of French bread to New Orleans,” Whann says. “I think that George Leidenheimer in his day was really working with his customers, just as we do today. You try to make something with the highest quality in mind that matches your customers' tastes and needs. He was doing that a hundred years ago, and we're doing it today.”

Change while staying the same

The bakery's product line includes muffuletta and Italian breads, but the primary product is the traditional, naturally fermented, hearth-baked French breads, such as po-boys and the best-selling 10-in. pistolet. Pistolet rolls serve as a basis for sandwiches and were originally named because their shape resembled a pistol. The bakery offers pistolets in a variety of sizes.

Leindenheimer's more than 20 truck routes provide fresh product seven days a week to po-boy shops, white tablecloth restaurants, hotels and commissaries in the Gulf Coast region. “New Orleans is a city that thrives on hospitality. The restaurateurs who are our customers are wonderful people to work with because their mission in life is to please people and to show off New Orleans,” Whann says. “We get to help them in that task and that's a terrific role to play.”

Whann also is very interested in expanding New Orleans-style cuisine throughout the country, and to that end, Leidenheimer ships frozen product to accounts nationwide through distributors. He foresees the growth of Leidenheimer to be in its frozen product division. The bakery is set up to meet all of its customers' bread needs.

While some wholesale bakeries find it hard to customize, Leidenheimer is committed to remaining flexible enough to offer customers customized products. When the bakery recently added its fourth production line, the flexibility to produce a variety of products on the line was key in choosing the components. With more than 50 SKUs, the bakery has to be able to quickly switch from product to product. The bakery has organized its baking shifts to accommodate customers' needs to help ensure they receive the freshest product possible. Whann's brother-in-law, Mitch Abide, became the bakery's production manager seven years ago after he graduated from AIB International, Manhattan, Kan.