{"id":309404,"date":"2026-02-21T07:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T07:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/309404\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T07:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T07:12:09","slug":"the-family-owned-bakery-that-jack-nicholson-loves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/309404\/","title":{"rendered":"The Family-Owned Bakery That Jack Nicholson Loves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n<p>                                             &#13;<br \/>\n                                                    &#13;<br \/>\n                            &#13;<br \/>\n                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"gallery-image \" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/intro-1771330843.jpg\" data-slide-url=\"https:\/\/www.thetakeout.com\/2102977\/jack-nicholson-loves-family-owned-bakery-perrecas\/\" data-post-id=\"2102977\" data-slide-num=\"0\" data-slide-title=\"The Family-Owned Bakery That Jack Nicholson Loves: \" width=\"780\" height=\"438\" alt=\"Headshot of Jack Nicholson wearing white shirt with black jacket and red glasses\"\/>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                    Tinseltown\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Jack Nicholson is one of the most legendary actors of all time, but it turns out he&#8217;s just like the rest of us in one critical sense: he&#8217;s obsessed with bread. And not just any old dough, one very specific loaf. The star of &#8220;Batman&#8221; and &#8220;The Shining&#8221; is a devoted fan of fresh-baked bread from Perreca&#8217;s Bakery in Schenectady, New York. Nicholson&#8217;s enthusiasm for Perreca&#8217;s loaves dates back to the 1980s, when he was in the area filming the 1987 period drama &#8220;Ironweed.&#8221; As legend has it, Nicholson&#8217;s driver took him to Perreca&#8217;s for a bit of local flavor, and it was love at first bite.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The New Jersey-born actor has surely visited more than a few Italian-American bakeries in his life, but something about Perreca&#8217;s clearly hit differently. Nicholson had the bread delivered to the &#8220;Ironweed&#8221; set daily for the remainder of shooting, and over the past four decades, he hasn&#8217;t let the short shelf life of the freshly baked loaves get in the way of his passion for Perreca&#8217;s. Apparently, he regularly has the coveted bread shipped to Los Angeles, where he keeps it closely guarded in his freezer (by the way, here&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetakeout.com\/1839543\/how-long-can-frozen-bread-last\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">how long frozen bread can last before going bad<\/a>). To Nicholson, Perreca&#8217;s dough is more important than any other kind of dough \u2014 in a 2017 interview, Perreca&#8217;s co-owner Maria Papa told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wmht.org\/blogs\/local-history-blog\/did-jack-nicholsons-knead-for-bread-from-schenectady-begin-in-1987-while-filming-william-kennedys-ironweed\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">WMHT<\/a> that the actor has said he&#8217;d rather give money than bread to high-profile producers who pay a visit to his Hollywood residence.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                What makes Perreca&#8217;s Bakery special<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Jack Nicholson&#8217;s longstanding connection undeniably adds to Perreca&#8217;s star power, but the bakery boasts an impressive reputation in its own right. The family-owned spot was founded in 1913 by Salvatore and Carmella Perreca, immigrants from the Campania region of Italy, and has been baking up locally legendary loaves in Schenectady for over a century. Unsurprisingly, the crusty, thick-crusted Neapolitan-style bread is famous across the region. Perreca&#8217;s has been named one of the best bakeries in the state of New York, which is no easy feat considering <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetakeout.com\/2046138\/local-bakeries-always-visit-in-nyc\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">the Empire State&#8217;s wealth of wonderful bakeshops<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">It&#8217;s worth noting that Nicholson isn&#8217;t the bakery&#8217;s only famous patron \u2013\u00a0the actor&#8217;s &#8220;Ironweed&#8221; co-star Meryl Streep reportedly visited Perreca&#8217;s, and Kathleen Turner and David Letterman have also stopped in. However, it&#8217;s safe to say no one is quite as loyal a fan as Nicholson. Beyond the iconic brick-oven baked bread, Perreca&#8217;s is also regionally renowned for its Neapolitan-style tomato pie (which joins this list of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetakeout.com\/1753744\/popular-pizza-styles-disappearing\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">once-popular pizza styles that are slowly disappearing<\/a>). No matter how you slice it, Jack Nicholson&#8217;s decades-long love affair with Perreca&#8217;s loaves is certainly worth a toast.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; Tinseltown\/Shutterstock Jack Nicholson is one of the most&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309405,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-309404","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}