Making Faux Bread for the Fauquier History Museum at the Old Jail, Prison Museum Exhibit, c. 1823-1860

My newest faux food assignment is making faux bread loaves and meat for a prison museum exhibit at the Fauquier History Museum a the Old Jail. After Zooming with the museum director, he was able to give me a little more information about about past meals at the prison. Records show that they ate meat and bread. In one place the prisoners complained about the meat being raw. We talked about the type of meat the prisoners would have eaten.

We decided on making some faux fatback, a Southern staple, which is a little like fatty bacon.

He asked that the bread loaves be made smaller than regular bread. He, also, wanted faux bread crumbs with perhaps a bite or two taken out of the bread.

I got to work immediately on the loaves of bread. They wouldn’t have eaten white bread in the 1823, so I decided to make a brown crusty whole-wheat bread. To do this I saved the gray sponge packing materials which a drone was mailed in. This type of gray foam makes an excellent faux bread material due to its bread-like texture.

The next step is to cut off the ends from the gray packing material to get two bread loaves. This tends to be a messy project, so I did it outside on the patio. You will need a sharp sawing type of knife and I also used a craft knife to cut small areas.

In the below photograph on the right, I glued a scrap piece of packing foam to fill in the center hole. I used white household glue and also rubber cement to hold things together.

At this point you will need to trim the “loaves” to get the size of bread you want. I took off some layers from the bottom and also cut down the edges to give it a nice bread like look.

For your crusty looking bread top, tear the scrap material with your hands, no scissors or knife cuts. It takes a little bit of time adjusting the scrap pieces on top of your loaf. Once you are satisficed with the look, glue the scraps down with white household glue or rubber cement.

When the glued top is dry you can continue to carve the bread top and sides. I also removed some layers from the bottom of the loaves since they seemed too big.

The last step is to paint the tops and sides of the loaves with acrylic paints. I got a pretzel roll from a bakery to use a color guide when mixing the color. I mixed together brown, off white, black, red, and chocolate brown acrylic paints to get the correct color.

To finish the bottom of the loaves, you can glue either a piece of brown felt or the back of a cereal box to the bottom.

In the photograph below, I actually used a cardboard soda box. I traced an oval around the loaves of bread. Then I cut the two ovals out. I slightly cut the size down to make sure the cardboard could not be seen from the finished side. I glued the cardboard ovals to bottom the of loaves with both white household glue and rubber cement.

I also went through my rag bag and found an old gray cotton dish towel. I thought this would be good to add to the exhibit to place the loaves of bread on.

The project is now completed once the glue dries.

Now to get to work on the bread scraps and fatback.

Happy Faux Food Crafting!

A Special Thank You to Sean Redmiles for allowing me to take photographs and for the tour of the Fauquier History Museum and Old Jail.