Angel Bakeries history

1870 – Turner Williams of Providence, Rhode Island invented and patented, US Patent #103811, the hand-cranked egg beater with two inter-meshed, counter-rotating whisks.

The story starts in 1875 when Rabbi Todros Levi Berman and his wife Krisha came from Russian to live in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

The story goes, according to a cookbook published in 1883, that a family who lived along the Atlantic Coast moved to a quiet place along the Hudson River and opened a boarding house.

Boston Cooking School Cook Book: A Reprint of the 1884 Classic, by Mrs.

In 1890, “Reb Shia” (as Yehoshua was nicknamed) founded the company’s largest bakery, located southwest of the Mea Shearim neighborhood, which operated on this site until the Sixties.

In Fannie Merritt Farmer’s 1896 updated version of the Boston Cooking School Cook Book, she uses the same recipe and calls the cake “Angel Food Cake.”

In the Sears’ 1897 catalogue a “Dover” egg beater sold for 9.

Passover in Jerusalem – 1913

With the end of the First World War in 1917, Yehoshua traveled to Austria to procure army surplus carriages which were used for bread delivery.

In 1927, the Angel Bakery was founded in Jerusalem and a long-standing rivalry between the two companies — and the two families — began.

Despite the competition, Berman flourished and in 1933, the family built two houses on Chancellor Street (later renamed Straus Street) that housed the first and only private tennis courts in Jerusalem at the time.

The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, by Fannie Merritt Farmer, 7th Edition, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1943.

During the 1948 Siege of Jerusalem, both the Berman and rival Angel bakeries were categorized as essential plants and were given special protection by the forces defending Jerusalem.

In 2001, Berman acquired two retail bakery chains, giving it a foothold in cakes and pastries, and specialty breads, and making Berman the second largest bakery chain after Angel.