- A mother-daughter duo sculpted a 6-foot replica of "Star Wars" character Han Solo out of bread.
- "Pan Solo" was entered in a scarecrow contest by the team at One House Bakery in Benicia, California.
As an entry for their hometown's 15th annual Downtown Scarecrow Contest, a family-owned bakery in Benicia, California debuted their latest sculpture made of bread: a 6-foot replica of "Star Wars" character Han Solo trapped in carbonite.
Affectionately dubbed 'Pan Solo,' the replica of Harrison Ford's character from the 1980 film "Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back" is made entirely of "dead dough," which contains no yeast.
The mother-daughter duo behind One House Bakery, chef Hannalee Pervan and her co-owner mother Catherine, spent a month from conception to executing the fine details of the sculpture, with his outstretched fingers and pained expression methodically contoured by hand.
"We're just giant science fiction nerds," Catherine Pervan, co-owner of One House Bakery, told Insider. "So it was kind of a no-brainer to go with such an iconic scene."
"Because the face is so iconic and you really want it to be Harrison Ford looking at you, and not just like my husband, that was challenging," Catherine Pervan told Insider. "So what I did was I went online and got a Harrison Ford mask and you can see all the little details — like he has those beautiful, luscious lips and it looks like he had his nose broken at some point, so we really focused on that."
Hanalee laid on plywood and served as a model for the sculpture, then focused mostly on the face while her mom sculpted his hands. They used heat guns instead of an oven to cook the top layer of dough in order to keep it smooth.
"Mom made me leave it because I was obsessing over the lips," Hannalee Pervan told The New York Times. "She was like, 'You need to walk away.'"
The sculpture will be displayed in front of the store through the end of the month as part of Benicia Main Street's scarecrow contest, where local businesses share their creations to be voted on by the public for a ribbon — and bragging rights.
The Pervans told Insider that, despite poking and smelling the sculpture, visitors don't believe Pan Solo is made out of dough, asking "how did you really do it?"
But Hannalee, who worked on the team that made bread for Thomas Keller's Michelin-starred restaurant, The French Laundry, says the whole thing is simply made of flour, sugar, and water, encasing the heartthrob in "levainite."
Pan Solo is not the Pervans' first foray into bread sculptures. Since opening in 2018, the family bakery has also displayed life-size replicas of characters from "The Mandalorian" and "Loki," as well as a baguette iron throne and White Walker for a Game of Scones scene as annual entries to the Scarecrow Contest — which the pair noted they have never won.
"For us it's not about the competition, it's just about the time after work where she's not my boss anymore and I'm not momming her," Catherine told Insider. "It's my favorite time."