I made three types of bread for these baskets. First, when I was working on the bread shelves for Gastronomia Furlan, I set aside a few extra mantovana rolls.
Next, I made baguette slices, using my usual white bread color mix: Fimo vanilla, Fimo Soft sahara, Premo white, and translucent. I was trying not to waste clay, since I’m currently very low on translucent, and therefore did the shading with soft pastels after having sliced and textured the bread. The challenge with doing these steps in this order is that it’s next to impossible to keep the pastels off the white cut surface. I had to do some major touching up, which was not 100% successful. I’m not too concerned, though, since much of the bread will be hidden in the baskets. In the future, once I’ve replenished my stock of polymer clay, I think it may work best to shade a whole loaf with soft pastels first and then cut it into slices. (Another option would be to apply the pastels using a tiny, wet brush, which I’ve found takes longer but allows for more control.)
Finally, I made some grissini—not the long, slender, uniformly shaped bread sticks that you’d buy in a package but short, fat, misshapen ones like those served at the real-life Osteria Al Vecchio Stallo.
Like the restaurant does, I lined the bottom of the baskets with a white napkin before filling with bread. (Instead of buying fabric specially for this project, I cut some small squares from an old bed sheet we were about to get rid of.)
Here are some photos of the bread baskets on the tables.
When I built the bar counter, I made shelves running all the way around underneath the counter. This is a perfect spot for storing extra baskets.
