On a Roll

Posted by: Michael Orey on October 24

Everyone is cutting back these days. The item below, from my BusinessWeek colleague Rebecca Reisner, certainly offers some guidance on making do with less — and yet finding pleasure in it. As for her 1,200 calorie-a-day diet, I think I’m on triple that. Does that mean I get 3 rolls?

Nearly every weekday for the last year, my lunch has included a cranberry pecan roll bought from Corrado Bread & Pastry in Grand Central Station. They’re also sold, I’ve noticed, at Whole Foods, Garden of Eden, and a couple of other places around the city.

I got curious about the provenance of the cranberry pecan roll because, first of all, I wondered who was responsible for this reason for living. The rolls consist of whole cranberries and pieces of fresh, sweet pecans dispersed throughout slightly dark, soft bread. The cranberries on top of the rolls are crisp and smoky flavored as though they were roasted over a fire, and the ones inside are springy and tart. And the rolls have hard, crusty tops, but aren’t flaky. You can eat them at your desk and barely leave a crumb.

Second, I was curious about the calorie count. I’m on a 1,200-calorie-a-day diet, and cheat on it every single day, but I like to know by how much. The rolls are petite, slightly bigger than clementines but smaller than tangerines. Fresh Direct carries raisin pecan rolls that look similar in size and shape, and the Web site said they have — oh, no — 236 calories each.

A call to Corrado’s flagship store yielded some clues. “The rolls are very popular,” said Claudio Martins, one of the principles of the Manhattan business. “We buy them from a bakery in Long Island City called Pain D’Avignon.”

“So are you a fan of the cranberry pecan rolls yourself?” I asked.

“I don’t sell anything I don’t adore,” Martins said. He put me in touch with Mr. Branislav Stamenkovic, one of three Yugoslavian brothers who left their troubled land and opened Pain D’Avignon in Massachusetts in 1992.

“The roll was first baked at our original location in Cape Cod,” Stamenkovic explained in pleasantly accented speech. “Everybody was making raisin rolls. There are a lot of cranberries on Cape Cod, so it was only natural to make cranberry rolls and bread.”

Between the Cape Cod and Long Island City bakeries, Pain D’Avignon sells about 3,000 cranberry pecan rolls a day. And the calorie count? Just 170 calories per roll. Bon appetite.