Aloha By David W. Brown
You hear the words “Hawaiian roll,” and your senses go into overdrive. Your mind’s eye sees the white, fluffy bread bursting from a round metal tin.
You feel the slight pull of the almost foamy bread as you tear a piece from it — no, not a piece. A hunk. A fistful of what can only be some fantastic new state of matter. Solid. Liquid. Gas. King’s Hawaiian bread. Is your mouth watering right now? I know you can taste it. I bet you can even feel the soft resistance of the bread as your teeth sink into the softball-sized portion in your hands. Did you keep track of the plastic bag tie to keep your tin of bread fresh? Doesn’t matter. To open King’s Hawaiian bread is to say, “Oh, just one more piece won’t hurt…well, just one more…another…well, we’re this far into it, may as well commit to the act…” Hawaiian bread in any form — roll, loaf, bun — is the culinary equivalent of poetry. It’s also a litmus test for your extended family. If you’re hosting Thanksgiving dinner and nobody shows up with at least one tin of the stuff, or the rolls — something — then you were born into the wrong family or didn’t properly vet your future in-laws. It’s the sort of oversight that should cause you, just before the meal is served, to take the turkey from the oven, golden brown and
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hot, juices dripping from the bird, and carry it on a platter to the dinner table, Charles Dickens style, for everyone to oooh and ahhh over, and then after saying, “Happy Thanksgiving, one and all!” you carry the platter out the front door and throw the turkey into the yard for the dogs to eat. Then you shout at your family to bring the right bread next year, or don’t bother coming at all. You’re not thankful for any of them, now get your stuff and get out. Thanksgiving’s canceled. It’s that good. To tell the history of Hawaiian bread is to tell the history of King’s Hawaiian, if only because Robert Taira, who founded the company, invented Hawaiian bread in the first place. “Robert had attended culinary school on the mainland, came home to Hawaii, and in the 1950s, founded a little place called Robert’s Bakery in a little town called Hilo, on the Big Island,” says John Linehan, the president of King’s Hawaiian. The young cook had tried Portuguese stone bread, which he really liked, but wanted to improve upon. “Stone bread is a
