Cuban bread

Cuban bread

Cuban bread is used to make Cuban sandwiches
Type	White bread
Place of origin	United States
Region or state	Florida
Created by	La Joven Francesca Bakery
Main ingredients	Flour, water, lard or vegetable shortening

Cuban bread is a fairly simple white bread, similar to French bread and Italian bread, but has a slightly different baking method and ingredient list (in particular, it generally includes a small amount of fat in the form of lard or vegetable shortening); it is usually made in long, baguette-like loaves. It is a staple of Cuban-American cuisine and is traditionally the bread of choice when making an authentic Cuban sandwich.

The origins of "real" Cuban bread are debated, with both Miami and Tampa, Florida claiming to be the home of the best. With regards to where it originated, the earliest U.S. bakery to produce Cuban bread was most likely La Joven Francesca bakery, which was established by the Sicilian-born Francisco Ferlita in 1896 in Ybor City, a thriving Cuban-Spanish-Italian community in Tampa. The bakery originally sold bread for 3 to 5 cents per loaf, many of which were delivered every morning like milk. Houses in Ybor City often had a sturdy nail driven into the door frame on the front porch, and a bread deliveryman would impale the fresh loaf of bread onto the nail before dawn.

Ferlita's bakery was destroyed by fire in 1922, leaving only the brick bread oven standing. He rebuilt it even larger than before and added a second oven, and it soon became a major supplier of Cuban bread for the Tampa/Ybor area. The bakery also added a dining area which became a place to congregate, drink a cup of Cuban coffee, and catch up on the local news.La Joven Francesca closed in 1973, but soon found new life when it was renovated and converted into the Ybor City State Museum, becoming the main part of the museum complex. The original ovens where the original Cuban bread was baked are still viewable inside.

La Segunda Bakery is currently the largest producer of Cuban bread in the Tampa area. It was co-founded by Juan Morè, who migrated to Tampa from Spain via Cuba and became a partner in a bakery co-op with three locations: "La Primera", "La Segunda", and "La Tercera" (literally, First, Second, and Third). Morè had been running La Primera, but when the other two bakeries closed in 1915, he bought the larger La Segunda building. His descendants have been running the bakery ever since, and it still uses Morè's original Cuban bread recipe and many of the same bread-making techniques.