By Rich Mullins
The Tampa Tribune

Video: Bread Making

Photos: The Art Of Making Bead

I know how to ruin hundreds of Cuban bread loaves now. Just work at an Ybor City Cuban bakery for a day as a total rookie.

I did. It’s not easy. Not by a long shot.

But I thought it was worth trying. If Tampa has a signature food, it’s the Cuban sandwich (sorry, grouper, you’re too bourgeois), lovingly smothered with ham, cheese, pickle and toasted golden brown.

Tampa gobbles thousands of Cuban sandwiches daily, and to find out where all that bread comes from, I worked the early shift at La Segunda Bakery on 15th Street.

My tutor for the day is Master Baker Carlos Hechaverria, and he chuckles at my first attempt at making a Cuban loaf.

“Nah, that’s no good,” Hechaverria says, smiling down at the rumpled wad I tried sculpting to perfection. His loaves look like works of art, slender, smooth, supple. My loaf resembles roadkill. A victim.

Hechaverria knows a little English and consoles me. “This bread, this is not easy. I made bread in Cuba 12 years. When I come here, I had to learn all over again.”

Today, it will be my job to learn how, and the day starts early.

My First Roll Is Out Of Bed

At 4:15 a.m., I drive through the dark down Nebraska Avenue and into La Segunda’s back parking lot.

Inside, the bakery smells of rich yeast, sweet pastries and hot machinery. It’s loud. Oven buzzers blare. Industrial fans blast air over racks of rising dough. Delivery drivers yell over the noise.

By 4:30, Hechaverria is halfway done preparing giant batches of dough.

He’s a big man with a kind grin and the practiced motions from two decades of baking. With an aluminum scoop, he measures white sugar, dusty flour and brown yeast. Everything goes into industrial mixers the size of minivans that knead the mixture into a bubbly heap.

Then I start my first task: stacking dough rolls into rows on canvas-covered planks.

“This is a good place to work,” says Jorge Diaz, who started here two months ago. “My family is here,” he says, pointing out people nearby. “There, my dad. There, my father-in-law.”

For two hours I stacked dough into rows, four loaves by 10 loaves.

It’s not entertaining. But the pace is fast, and I learn what it’s like working somewhere where you don’t speak the language. I know some Spanish, but not enough to catch the jokes or the warnings that I think meant, ”Get the @$&*# out of the way!”

I don’t know the English word for @$&*# .

I Knead Some Help

Next, my job is kneading “full Cuban loaves.” I’m awful.

The motion goes like this: Smash your forearm into the dough. Fold it over. Smash again. Roll the dough outward with your palms. Curl it back with your fingertips. Stretch it into a long snake.

I try one.

“Nah, garbage,” says Hechaverria, pointing to a pile of dough scraps on the floor. I toss down my victimized wad, and it lands with a thump.

I try again. “Nah,” he says. He’s laughing now. I try another. “Nah.”

Thump, thump, thump. I keep trying. All thumps. Each represents a sandwich that will never fulfill its destiny.

And that’s tragic because the Cuban sandwich has been part of Tampa’s way of life since the early 20th century.

The Cuban sandwich probably dates to the early 1900s in South Florida. As New Orleans has its gumbo and Chicago has its deep dish pizza, this is Tampa’s signature meal.

Most aficionados agree theideal sandwich contains a layer of ham, roast pork, cheese and a pickle. A dispute rages as to whether the next step is gobbling it down right away or pressing the sandwich on a grill until the contents melt into gooey happiness.

But one thing is constant - the use of a crispy, slightly flaky (some would say dry) bread from a long Cuban loaf. That bread comes from dozens of bakeries in the city, many family-owned for generations. La Segunda sells to dozens of restaurants, including some that send their own delivery trucks to pick up the bread.

The uncooked dough is tough, rubbery. Kneading it, my arms and shoulders ache as if I’m doing pushups. By 8 a.m., I fight the urge to walk out in the back alley and lie down on the pavement.

I think of how well-paid economists question why some blue-collar workers buy $3,000 plasma-screen TVs. But as hours roll by, monotony and exhaustion kick in. I think, “Man, if I had to do this every day, for weeks, years, I’d collapse on the couch every night. … Go ahead, brother, buy the HDTV. You earned it.”

Splitting Leaves Me Numb

After a brief break at 8:45 (Is the sun up yet?), Hechaverria brings over one of the greatest inventions ever: the motorized dough roller.

The word “motorized” now gives me a thrill. In a glorious whir, the machine ejects tidy rows of dough tubes. My job is to put rolls in rows … for … two … hours … nonstop.

At 10:45, bakery co-owner Raymond More puts me on a new job: palm leaves.

Water-soaked leaves placed down the spine of the loaf help it split in a straight line as it expands in the oven. Every loaf will split, but an uncontrolled split makes a straight loaf look like digestive anatomy.

Using palm leaves on bread probably dates to the Egyptians, if not earlier, More says. French bakers slice their bread with razors to control splitting. Others let it split naturally.

La Segunda produces 7,000 to 10,000 loaves a day. That means 21,000 to 30,000 leaves. The bakery uses Palmetto palm leaves because the trees are short and accessible to the crews More sends each day into the woods around Tampa.

Suburban sprawl is cutting into palm sources, but More says they have to use Palmetto because the leaves retain water and don’t turn stringy or “hairy” in the oven.

“I’ve seen bakeries in Europe use wet shoelaces, but that can get kind of nasty,” More says. “We use fresh leaves for each loaf.”

Still, after placing 100 leaves, I doubt the merit. After 1,000 leaves, my thumbs go numb.

Every time I think we’re done, someone rolls up another 400 loaves. If the bread could talk, I picture it smirking at me, saying “Ha! Did you think you were done, rookie?”

Joed Turns Up The Heat

I chat up the guy working next to me, Joed Oneal. I try to spell his name right. I ask, “O-apostrophe-N-E-I-L.?”

“No," he says, then turns around and pulls up his T-shirt. Tattooed in calligraphy across his back: JOED ONEAL.

Got it.

At noon, Joed takes me to work the ovens. “Don’t touch the bread with your fingers,” Joed says. “You’ll ruin them.” Instead, gently roll the dough onto narrow planks with your palm, then rapidly slide them into rows deep in the oven, leaving a 1-inch gap.

We get into a rhythm, and I bump a few loaves together at a pace I’ll call “half Joed.”

“I’ve been doing this eight years, since I was 15 years old,” Joed says. “Where else are you going to make this kind of money for six hours’ work.” He works from 8:30 a.m. to about 2 p.m. and makes $700 a week.

His only complaint: The place heats to 110 degrees in the summer.

By 1 p.m., Joed says “Later,” and I stagger onto the sunlit loading dock. All around are boxes of bread to be shipped.

Who knows how many I made. In a couple of hours, another crew will start, and the cycle begins again. And the next day, and the next.

Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at (813) 259-7919 or rmullins@tampatrib.com.

BY THE NUMBERS

1915 Year first La Segunda bakery was built in Ybor City 7,000 to 10,000 Cuban bread loaves produced daily by La Segunda Central Bakery 400 Degrees Fahrenheit in main ovens 600 Hourly capacity, in loaves, of main ovens 36 Average length in inches for long loaf of Cuban bread 3 Work shifts running 24 hours a day at peak capacity $1.60 Cost of one loaf of Cuban bread at retail counter

Source: La Segunda Bakery

BY THE NUMBERS

Source: La Segunda Bakery

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