Eric Mullen was a stranger in a foreign land. He landed in Sicily on a Saturday, headed to a small town far from the English-speaking tourist circuit, and showed up at the bakery on Monday morning without hardly a lick of Italian. As the head baker showed him how it’s done, Mullen just tried to observe and absorb.

“He would bring over a bag of flour, say what it was in Italian, dump it in the mixer, bring over a cup of water, say what it was in Italian, and dump it in the mixer,” Mullen explained. “Six days a week, nine hours a day, you catch on to this stuff,” he added.