Bread of Life, Baked in Rhode Island

To the Cavanagh family of Greenville, Rhode Island, the product they make at a nondescript plant is just bread and water. But to millions at churches around the world, it is a sacred offering.

Here’s something that’s become pretty rare nowadays: a recession-proof business.

Over the past 65 years making communion bread has become quite profitable for the Cavanagh Company. Best of all, there’s been no let up in demand, except for a decline during recent Roman Catholic Church priest scandals.

The bread is used as a sacramental offering that, for Catholics and some other Christians, represents the breaking of the bread at the Last Supper and the body of Christ.

The family-owned company makes about 80 percent of the communion bread used by the Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran and Southern Baptist churches in the United States. It has a similar market share in Australia, Canada and Britain, and is now looking to expand to West Africa.

“We feel as though we’re a bakery, and all we’re making is bread,” said Andy Cavanagh, the company’s general manager, and part of the fourth generation of Cavanaghs to work here. “It’s not that we don’t have respect for what happens to it, but that transformation is out of our hands and takes place in a church. The best thing we can do is make sure the bread is perfect in every way possible.”

Indeed, some customers declare that the reason the Cavanaghs have such a large market share is because their product is about as close to perfect as earthly possible. “It doesn’t crumb, and I don’t like fragments of our Lord scattering all over the floor,” said the Rev. Bob Dietel, an Episcopal priest.

Mr. Dietel uses Cavanagh altar bread at his parish, St. Aidan’s, in Camano Island, Wash. He likes that the large wafer, which he holds up and breaks during Mass, cracks cleanly.

A few years ago, the congregation switched to the wheat wafer the Cavanaghs make from the white. They purchase about 6,000 wafers yearly from a Seattle religious goods store. Traditionally, nuns, priests or members of a congregation baked altar bread.

In 1943, Andy’s great-grandfather, John Cavanagh Sr., an inventor, and grandfather, John Jr., were asked to help local Catholic nuns renovate their antiquated baking equipment. The men created ovens and mixers for the nuns; then three years later, John Jr. and his brother Paul started making bread themselves.

They distributed all of it to Catholic churches and monasteries.

For 20 years, the Cavanagh bread was small, white and nearly transparent, intended to dissolve on the tongue. After the changes initiated in the church at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, Catholic churches wanted the wafers to be thicker and chewable, like real bread.

The Cavanaghs, who are Catholic, started producing the wafers of today — usually whole wheat and sealed on the outside to prevent crumbs.

The company will not disclose sales numbers, but says it makes about 850 million wafers each year, and sells them for less than a penny each. Almost all of the company’s bread is sold wholesale to religious supply stores and Southern Baptist bookstores. In the Catholic Church the company sells to monasteries; the nuns then sell the bread to churches.

“It’s a source of income for us, but at the same time it’s a service to the parishes in the diocese,” said Sister Marilyn McGillan of the Sisters of the Precious Blood in Watertown, N.Y. Her monastery sells to about 100 churches in the Catholic Diocese of Ogdesnburg, N.Y. “We’re like a clearinghouse for altar breads for our dioceses.”

There are many varieties to choose from. The company sells both white and wheat flour wafers, in sizes ranging from one and one-eighth inches wide to nine inches wide. Some are double-thick, and all except the large ones can be embossed with designs such as a cross or a lamb.

In 1970, Paul’s sons, Brian and Peter, joined the business and still run the company today. They expect Andy, 30, Peter’s son; and his two brothers, Dan, 31 and Luke, 28, to buy them out one day.

Each brother has his own particular niche in the company. Andy deals with the finances, Luke the Web site and Dan the machines.

Dan Cavanagh feels most at home in the large baking area.

About 90 pounds of cake flour is mixed in huge tubs, with about 13 gallons of water. The batter is then sent through a tube, where it is piped onto a large metal plate. Another plate clamps on top, and it goes through the oven. Each plate is like a “very large, 500-pound waffle iron,” Dan Cavanagh said.

Once they are out of the oven, the wafers spend about 15 minutes in what is essentially a humidifier, so they do not become brittle. When sufficiently moist they roll down a tube and into a spinning cylinder that resembles the ones in bingo halls.

The wafers are then shot to a machine that either puts them in sleeves of 100 or counts them for bags of 250. Then they are boxed.

Across the room is where the bread for Southern Baptist churches is baked. The mixing process is similar, except the dough contains oil. Since the bread rises, it is baked in a large rotating oven and comes out as small squares.

The wafers and bread are made in both white and whole wheat, but most congregations favor the whole wheat because it has more flavor.

The company has branched out and now sells church supplies including altars and pews in England and Australia, and is keeping an eye on the growing Catholic communities in Africa and South America.

But no matter where they do business, they say, the company will remain in Rhode Island, and in the family.

“It’s so gratifying to have it be a successful family business,” Brian Cavanagh said.