It tastes like, well… Winnipeg City’s cherished KUB rye could become an honest and unfussy — but treasured — slice of history if owner can’t sell bakery By: Melissa Martin Posted: 7:00 PM CST Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/11/2022 (673 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Of all the many ways I’m a bad Winnipegger, being a latecomer to KUB bread is one. It’s not my fault; I didn’t grow up with rye. My parents were WASPy immigrants from the American Midwest who never quite picked up on the city’s more insular culinary traditions; when I was a kid, all the loaves in our house were white.

So my introduction came much later, as a freshly minted adult. I tried it for the first time in its natural habitat, which is to say, late at night in some perfunctory community centre hall. There are many rye breads in Winnipeg, and some are better than others. But for whatever reason, when it came to wedding socials it had to be, and was almost always, KUB.

Oh, it was magic, then. Midnight bread. Mop-up bread. A bread to invite a second wind. Palm-sized, smeared with mustard, served on paper plates with more anticipation than ceremony. Slap a slice of ham on there. Squeeze it around a suspiciously yellow cube of cheese. It wasn’t fine dining, but it satisfied a simpler urge. More primal. In those moments, it was love.

Sometimes, love is about familiarity, more than anything. It’s the comfort of knowing what to expect, and knowing it will be repeated. And Winnipeg has never been too eager for change. The tenor of the city, in general, is one of wanting most things to stay the same. But nothing ever does.

So when news broke on Tuesday night that KUB Bakery was closing its doors after nearly 100 years of operation, it was, as many rightly declared, the end of an era. It was also a source of real grieving: on social media, Winnipeggers swapped tales about what the bakery’s products had meant to them, and vowed to stash loaves of KUB in their freezers for posterity.

What is that alchemy that makes something as humble as a loaf of bread into something more ingrained in an identity? No question, it’s a matter of history: since 1923, when it began life as Kucher’s Ukrainian Bakery, KUB’s products worked their way into the working-class life of the city, tied up with immigrant roots that, at that time, were growing something new.

And when that gets handed down between generations, it transitions into something beyond how it started. Over the years, KUB came to occupy the same curious cultural space as Jeanne’s cakes, a source of both widespread affection and bemused debate. It didn’t have to be great, it was just what had always been there. It was the thing that didn’t change.

The world did, though. This week, KUB’s owners — the Einfeld family purchased it in 1982 — told reporters that the sudden closure was due to a confluence of events. Rising ingredient costs; the loss of big-event business, such as for Jets concession stands, during the worst of the pandemic; and the owners’desire to retire, with no one waiting to take over.

Still, maybe the collective outpouring of sadness at KUB’s loss is a little premature. It might not be gone forever. The owners would sell the bakery, they told reporters, if there was a buyer. Maybe there’s someone in Winnipeg whose ears perked when they heard that. Someone with equal amounts of cash, business sense and nostalgic memories of the brand.

But if KUB really has baked its last loaf, let’s take a moment to remember. Because there’s a reason we’ve loved it so.

Consider what happens when I’m travelling, and making friends from other places in the world. Sooner or later, the chatter turns to describing the local specialties of our cities. When it does, I can hear the words as they spill out of my mouth, and I know that, to an outsider, the culinary highlights I’m rattling off sound impossibly quaint and comically boring.

“Well, we have a sauce that combines mayo, dill and honey, and uh, we also have this one kind of rye bread.”

That’s the charm of it, though. If those are the things we’ve held onto, maybe it’s because they capture some sort of essence of the city. It’s Winnipeg, nothing fancy. Unlovely but honest, and both for better and for worse grounded by its history. So it’s perfect that a loaf of bread became a cherished symbol of this city. It feels like home; I wouldn’t change a thing.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Melissa Martin
Reporter-at-large

Melissa Martin reports and opines for the Winnipeg Free Press.

   Read full biography