Have a carby Christmas: Mancini's bakes up a holiday tree

Mancini’s Bakery is taking Christmas carbs to a new level.

The popular bakery created an 8-foot-tall Christmas tree crafted from its Italian bread.

The holiday display should draw fresh attention, said Nick Mancini Hartner, co-owner of the bakery and the mastermind behind the bread tree.

“I’ve always enjoyed playing with the bread and making bread art out of it,” Hartner said. “When I was a kid, my mom used to bring home bread dough — that was our play dough. Fast forward 20 years later, I’m baking and I like to make artwork out of it and put in the window, just to catch people’s attention and do something different with the bread.”

Though Hartner has always enjoyed creating artful masterpieces from bread dough, a Christmas tree proved to be a much larger undertaking than any prior project.

“I’ve played with different things, but never on this scale,” he said, adding that he’d previously baked an 18-inch Christmas tree made of bread.

This tree towers over his past pieces. The festive bread creation weighs about 140 pounds and is made entirely of Mancini’s Italian bread, which Hartner brushed with olive oil.

“I like to keep it 100% edible, 100% Italian bread,” Hartner said.

Cooking up this Christmas confection took quite a bit of work, Hartner said. In all, the process took about six hours from start to finish, including mixing, shaping and baking.

Shaping the dough into a Christmas tree took less than 30 minutes.

“If you take too long, the bread will collapse. If you do it too early, the bread won’t be ready to work. You have a tight window,” Hartner explained.

Once it was shaped, the tree took about two hours to bake — and it took four people to heave the massive tree into the oven.

“It was really challenging — just the sheer weight of it and getting it through doorways,” Hartner said.

The tree will be on display beginning Friday outside of Mancini’s bakery in McKees Rocks. Shoppers are encouraged to take selfies with the display.

“We wanted to do something to put people in the holiday spirit,” Hartner said.

While Hartner said he’s hopeful that the display will draw people to their business, he also wanted it to serve as a reminder to support all local businesses this holiday season.

“I just want to remind people to come out in these crazy times we’re in and support their local businesses — not just us, but every local bakery,” he said.

Though this is the first time Mancini’s Bakery has created bread-based artwork of this magnitude, it could become an annual holiday tradition.

“If everyone enjoys it, maybe we’ll play with it and maybe make a bigger one next year,” Hartner said.