The Force is strong at One House Bakery in Benicia, California!
Every year, mother-daughter baking team Hannalee Pervan and Catherine Pervan spend months working on a sculpture for the 15th Annual Scarecrow Contest in their hometown. Other businesses in town decorate their storefronts with scarecrows, but naturally, these bakers choose a different medium: bread!
In past years, Hannalee and Catherine have created bread sculptures like “Game of Scones” and the “Paindoughlorian.” This year, they returned to the “Star Wars” universe to craft Han Solo trapped in carbonite from “The Empire Strikes Back.”
Once they’d made up their minds, the bakers got to work making “Pan Solo” from scratch!
Since Hannalee is about 6-feet-tall, just like Han Solo actor Harrison Ford, Catherine started by tracing her daughter on a piece of wood to provide an outline for the sculpture. Then they baked different kinds of bread to suit the different elements of the artwork.
“It actually was a complicated process because if your art medium is dough, it’s not like clay or papier-mâché or anything like that,” Catherine explained. “It really has a mind of its own. It’s quite organic and you put it in the oven and it’s going to expand, or shrink, or crack, or come out with weird bubbles and stuff like that. So it’s a lot of trial and error.”
It took about a month of working overtime to build Pan Solo in pieces, then they put it all together and shared the results both in their shop window, and on social media. It didn’t take long before their creation was discovered in both places. People can’t get enough of their incredibly detailed sculpture!
The only problem with all of the admiration is keeping the sculpture intact. It seems that no one can keep their hands off of it!
“They just come and take pictures with it and they’re touching him, smelling him, and poking at him,” Catherine said with a laugh. “We just repaired another hole in him today. I think he’s had his nose broken at one point, like the actual Harrison Ford. People just want to touch it!”
Neither Hannalee nor Catherine can believe the amount of attention Pan Solo is getting! The official “Star Wars” Instagram has even commented with an offer of bringing blue milk to enjoy with the bread. The bakers say they’re glad their hard work is bringing joy to so many people!
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