A Baker's Dozen...Of Lawyers?! - 28 School Street

We have arrived at the home of Manghi’s Bread, which opened in Montpelier in 1981. With the explosion of the local food movement over the past few decades, we are spoiled for choice in Central Vermont when it comes to homemade bread, but before any of that got rolling there was the Manghi family. Elaine and Paul started the business in their home in North Randolph in the 1970s before moving the operation to Montpelier, and the bakery is now under the direction of their daughter Maria. Inside, you are immediately in the midst of a real, working bakery and enveloped in the sights and fragrance of fresh-baked loaves. There’s no café or fancy display case, and everything is so informal that you may think they aren’t set up to serve retail customers but they most certainly are. You may very well walk away holding something still warm from the oven.

Such a Clan of Attorneys!
The house they are in is one of the oldest in Montpelier, built in the early 1800s by Samuel Prentiss, who lived there with his wife Lucretia, who gave birth to no less than 12 children. Two died in infancy, but the rest, all boys, grew up in the house, and all ten of them studied law, following in their father’s footsteps. As an earlier guide for the city remarked, “Montpelier will probably never again bring forth such a clan of attorneys!”