Every day, the area’s numerous Portuguese bakeries work hard baking up soft, velvety sweetbread to be dunked into coffee and tea and enjoyed by young and old alike.

Their busiest time of year, however, is Easter.

The United Liberty Bakery at 1173 Stafford Road on Easter week bakes enough Portuguese sweet bread for 3,000 hard-boiled eggs to be inserted into the loaves.

I’m going to make a lot of sweet bread,” said John Vasconcelos, who owns United Liberty Bakery with his wife, Goretti.

“That’s a tradition from the old country,” Goretti said.

Goretti was referring to her native country of Portugal, where it is customary to eat sweetbread with a hard-boiled egg baked into its center on Easter Sunday. The egg symbolizes new life and the resurrection of Christ.

When the Portuguese emigrated to this area, they brought the tradition with them, opened bakeries, and shared their culture. Today, Portuguese bakeries in the greater Fall River, New Bedford, Taunton and Attleboro areas are selling their sweet bread with boiled eggs to the masses.

“That’s a Portuguese tradition in the old country. Over here, we have the Easter bunny,” said Herman Medeiros, owner of Medeiros & Sons Bakery at 822 Eastern Ave.

Medeiros explained that in the “old country,” money was tight, but the sweet bread and egg was a treat, especially enjoyed by children.

“When I was a kid, we’d look forward to this,” Medeiros said. “It was dessert. There was no candy.”

The bakers said that making sweet bread with boiled eggs is not very difficult. The egg can either be boiled before it is inserted into the uncooked dough, or not. Often times it cooks while the bread bakes.

“We mix the dough and roll it, and before we put it in the oven, we put the egg in it,” said Manny Pacheco, owner of Cinderella Bakery at 975 N. Main St.

The large sweet breads bake for about an hour, Pacheco said, and the small loaves for about 30 minutes.
“I can’t keep up,” Pacheco said.

Cinderella Bakery is mixing up about 120 pounds of dough for sweet bread three times a day.
For Medeiros & Sons Bakery, the amount of sweetbread they sell triples at Easter, and it’s sold to all races and nationalities.

“We sell 1,000 a week,” Medeiros said. “You don’t have to be Portuguese.”