page_title: Cuban bread
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Cuban bread / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The old Ferlita Bakery, now the Ybor City State Museum.
context_page_description: 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; 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.
context_section_description: 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 first commercial bakery in the U.S. 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. It was rebuilt and expanded, and it soon became a major supplier of Cuban bread for the Tampa 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. The original ovens where the original Cuban bread was baked are still viewable inside.
  La Segunda Bakery in Ybor City is currently the largest producer of Cuban bread in the world and ships the product all over Florida and beyond. 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.
caption: Old Ferlita (La Joven Francesca) Bakery, now Ybor City Museum State Park in Tampa's Ybor City
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