Italian Superior Bakery
Masi's Western Avenue Bread© Antonius F. Volcinus de MontibusIf posed the question 'What is the main street of Chicago?' I suspect most people -- be they natives or knowledgeable visitors -- would think first of downtown and the Loop and suggest either State Street or nowadays especially Michigan Avenue as the most appropriate answer. The reasons for choosing one of those streets are obvious and correspond roughly to the criteria which incline people to think of Broadway or Fifth Avenue as the principal street of New York, or the Kurfürstendamm of Berlin, the Champs Elysées of Paris, the Dam of Amsterdam, Princes Street of Edinburgh, etc. Beautiful, even monumental architecture, fashionable shops and expensive eateries, proximity to major institutions and location in the city centre or downtown area. On all counts, Michigan Avenue from the Loop to the Magnificent Mile deserves its place alongside the other great streets of the world's major cities. But as much as I can enjoy the fashionable, the monumental and the cosmopolitan attractions of downtown, the most interesting and in a sense the most important street in all of Chicago is to my mind Western Avenue.
That Western Avenue is the longest street in the city, extending all the way from the northern city-boundary to its southern counterpart, is fairly widely known and I would guess that it must be one of the longer city streets in all the world. Given its central location, it forms a north-south axis that crosses all three of the major interstate highways that serve Chicago and so it functions as a crucial artery in the city's traffic patterns, a rôle which seems to be reflected in the presence of so many car dealerships and auto repair shops along virtually its entire length. But in between all of the car lots and muffler shops, one sees on this great avenue an amazing array of reflections of the history and current ethnic complexity of the city. Western Avenue is at once a Mexican street, an African-American street, a Polish street, a Puerto Rican street, a Pakistani street, a Korean street, an Irish street, a German street and an Italian street. And that list is likely incomplete.
***
Like New York, Chicago once had a sufficiently large Italian population that it had not just one but several sizeable Italian neighbourhoods. On the northside, in the area where the Cabrini-Green projects were later built, was a predominantly Sicilian neighbourhood known as 'Little Hell', of which to my knowledge nothing remains. Over on the near northwest side, in West Town on Grand around Racine and Ogden, there is a now much diminished yet still quite visible Italian presence, which includes a number of restaurants and shops. Further west on Grand, around the intersections of Grand and Huron with Western Avenue is another and particularly little known Italian neighbourhood, primarily to the west of Western but represented on that street by a couple of funeral homes and other Italian-owned businesses. About four miles directly to the south of this enclave, down in the Heart of Chicago neighbourhood, on the east side of Western and more especially on Oakley, is the well-known northern Italian community with its cluster of restaurants.
The largest of the old Italian areas in Chicago was the one centred on and thus generally referred to as 'Taylor Street'. Back at the height of its expansion, this 'neighbourhood' -- really more an amalgam of many contiguous, smaller neighbourhoods -- extended across a narrow but long band between Harrison and Taylor running from around Halsted in the east all the way out past Western and, according to one older resident of the area, on to California and even Sacramento. That was in the 1920's and 30's and 40's, before the socioeconomic and demographic changes that came on the heels of World War II and, perhaps more importantly, the Near West Removals that were initiated under the auspices of Richard Daley Senior. Already in the 1940's, some of the Taylor Street Italians had started to move out of the Near West for places further west, such as the area around Grand and Harlem, and as they moved out, Mexicans began to move into parts of the Taylor Street corridor. Then, with the 'Removals', that is, the series of massive building projects of the highway circle, the University of Illinois Circle campus, the development of the Illinois Medical District, and the building of low-income housing projects, the core of the Taylor Street neighbourhood was swept away, with the displaced Italian population again heading westward to the Harlem Avenue area and beyond to the western and northwestern suburbs. Many of the Mexicans of Taylor Street moved a little ways south to the already strongly Mexican Pilsen neighbourhood.
Ultimately remaining of the Italian Taylor Street corridor are just two small enclaves which frame the intervening medical district, both of which have seen some rough times in recent decades but now are on the upswing. Indeed, the eastern enclave, which stretches from Morgan to Ashland and is now commonly referred to as 'Taylor Street' or even 'Little Italy', has a thriving and still expanding (through increasingly less Italian) cluster of restaurants, as well as an expanding and ever more valuable real estate market: houses in the neighbourhood which sell for well more than a half and now even well more than a whole million dollars are increasingly common. Though a certain noteworthy portion of the old Italian population of the area still resides there, the neighbourhood can hardly still be considered an overwhelmingly Italian one, despite all the restaurants that seem to indicate that. But it is to a certain degree still an Italian neighbourhood and the presence of some Italian businesses such the salumeria, Conte di Savoia, Chiarugi's hardware store, and Scafuri's bakery, even if a good measure of their customers live elsewhere, bears witness to that fact.
To the west of 'Taylor Street' and the medical centre is, of course, more of Taylor Street and the other enclave that continues to have direct ties to the old, massive Italian neighbourhood that once stretched across Chicago's Near West. This somewhat isolated area, as product of forced removals that took place under old man Daley, had no traditional name and so was given in more recent years the appellation, perhaps by inventive real estate agents, 'Tri-Taylor', which is intended to denote the triangle based on the commercial stretch of Taylor Street and formed by Harrison, Ogden and Western.
Unlike the eastern Taylor Street enclave, the enclave by Western Avenue developed and still has a strongly Mexican character, though some blocks are home primarily to African-Americans and now, with the real estate boom of the inner core of Chicago in the last ten years or so, a first, albeit still small, wave of 'young urban professionals' has taken up residence there as well. Of the old Italian population, a small measure remains scattered throughout the neighbourhood, though it would be easy to overestimate their strength if one were to judge by the eateries on Taylor Street, where there are several Italian owned and/or oriented places that cater primarily to the lunch business from the nearby correctional and medical institutions, including two pizzerias. Perhaps the most interesting indication of the degree to which this once was a predominantly Italian area is the fact it contains not one but two Neapolitan bakeries, namely, Ferrara's, the
pasticceria on Taylor by Odgen, and Masi's, the
panificio by the intersection with Taylor on Western Avenue.
*******
The roots of Masi's Italian Superior Bakery go back to the village of San Vitaliano, near the town of Acerra and just a short way north of Naples within the
provincia bearing that city's name and within sight of the mighty volcano, Vesuvius. From there to the United States came Salvatore Masi, who in 1912, at the age of 19, immigrated to this country, settling first for a time in Chicago, before moving back east to New York. There he opened his own bakery in the Ozone Park section of Queens, New York, in 1926. After but a few years, however, Salvatore moved along with his growing family back to Chicago where a number of his close relatives were settled and in 1933 he opened the original 'Western Avenue Bread' bakery in the building that still stands at 915 South Western Avenue; Salvatore moved the bakery one more time in 1940, but then just a few doors to the south and into the present location at 933 South Western. In its early days, 'Western Avenue Bread' filled a function for the immediate, predominantly Italian neighbourhood much like that of a village or neighbourhood bakery back in Italy, preparing basic baked goods for the community but also providing oven facilities for those who made their own dough but lacked a home oven.
Out of the ten children in the Masi family, three of the sons still keep the business going: the eldest of the children, Sam, the youngest, Joe, and Frank, who is the man in charge of the actual bread baking. Of course, Frank grew up in and around the bakery but really started to step into the central rôle of baker after returning to Chicago from a stint in the army in 1953. During the 1950's and 1960's, despite the departure of many of the Taylor Street Italians for points west, Western Avenue Bread did a brisk business based in part on the remaining community, in part on sales to suburbanites who would return to the old neighbourhood to stock up on bread, and also in part on deliveries of bread to some of the Italian enclaves to the west and northwest, including all the way out to the Abruzzese community by Irving Park and Cumberland. Given the volume of business, an upgrade in the oven became necessary and in 1960 Frank Masi had a new one, with a capacity of roughly 300 pounds of bread, custom built for the bakery by the Faulds firm of Chicago.
Thanks to the business from loyal customers who have left the Taylor and Western neighbourhood -- in some cases, long ago -- but still with religious regularity return to buy their bread from the Masis, the business, which at some point was given the name 'Italian Superior Bakery', has been able to survive the gradual but steady dwindling of the local Italian population and the onset of some tough times in the area. The worst period lasted from about 1970 to 1990, when 'Tri-Taylor' struggled as a shrinking middle class enclave surrounded by aging industrial sites and patches of full-blown urban blight. Drug dealing along Western Avenue was rampant and violent crime, including murders, was hardly unknown. But the Masis persevered and even experimented with expanding the business to include a salumeria in the late 1980's. Unfortunately, the expansion failed and one suspects that the state of the fringes of the Tri-Taylor neighbourhood and the reputation of the area may have played a part, for in the same period Conte di Savoia moved from their Roosevelt Street location to their current site on Taylor Street in the established restaurant row to the east of the Medical District; in that well-travelled setting, that store has thriven. But in the course of the 1990's and the first years of the new millennium, the rough surroundings of the Tri-Taylor island have been largely pacified and increasingly renewed and the whole area seems to be a likely target for full-fledged gentrification. But meanwhile, Frank and his brothers have seen business slacken a bit, as old customers die off and potential new ones either follow the Atkins diet or else unthinkingly settle for the baked goods produced under industrial conditions.
After 71 years of essentially continual, full time operation, the Masis cut their days of baking production down to just four per week in January, 2005. It appears that the end of an era grows nigh, though in the meantime, the residents of Tri-Taylor and those who travel there can still enjoy on most days the pleasure of eating freshly baked bread made by a single master baker who clearly and genuinely loves his work.
***
Given the location of Masi's Italian Superior Bakery, casual walk-in customers are not very numerous; most of the people who come into the store are in some sense regulars, either from the neighbourhood or from a family that used to be in the neighbourhood or in some cases just people who are willing to go out of their way for good Italian bread: To whatever degree the first-time visitor doesnt feel embraced, they should bear this fact in mind. For me, I felt recognised and welcome and appreciated as a customer after a second visit and have since found both Joe and Frank, the two brothers who almost always are present during business hours to be genuinely friendly, not offering the trained smile and politesse of the modern food industry, but a smile or grin of dimensions appropriate to the moment and a verbal greeting, often but never formulaicly by name. And this basic genuineness of the Masi brothers is very much reflected in the products that they make in their bakery.
The bulk of the business is in basic Italian bread, which they make in a range of sizes and shapes. These days, most of the bread produced comes in an elongated (but not long and narrow) form, the
filone, with the commonly produced sizes being the half pound ($1.00), pound ($1.90), one and a half pound and two pounds. If one wishes, one can place an order ahead of time for round loaves and Frank will make them, and custom ordered loaves can conceivably be even larger than two pounds; in the old days, some families would order -- and a few occasionally still do -- round loaves or
filoni of three or even six pounds. Similarly shaped and sized loaves of whole wheat bread are also available.
Aside from the staple Italian white and whole wheat loaves, the Masis also make pan loaves, that is, white sandwich bread. Long loaves of 'French' bread, which undergo an especially long second rising, are made on the weekends and on special order. Small rolls can also be ordered. Also very much worthy of note is the completely unsweetened cornbread that they occasionally make in small long loaves, another item one should probably order ahead of time. The Masi's make
freselle, the double-baked rusks that come in the form of rings, that one must soak in broth or sauce and which are especially great accompaniments to dishes such as escarole and beans; the
freselle are made with regular and whole wheat dough. Last of the basic bread products are bread crumbs which are sold in large bags and which I particularly appreciate precisely because in each bag their is a range in crumb size, from very fine to quite coarse, allowing the cook greater flexibility.
Some other baked products that the Masis make are square pan pizzas, the basic version of which is dressed with tomato sauce and mozzarella, but the pizza can also be had with spinach, ricotta, or excellent Italian sausage that is supplied to the bakery by the people who run Fontano's over in the eastern part of the Taylor Street neighbourhood on Polk (1058 W. Polk). Following a tradition that I grew up with, the Masis make their anchovy pizza with no cheese whatsoever; just the tomato sauce, some oregano and pieces of the little fish.
The only sweet item produced at the Italian Superior Bakery that I know of are the lemon flavoured
taralli, rings of cookie-like dough made with butter, eggs, sugar and lemon oil. These are quite delicious and bear the unmistakeable mark of Italian culinary restraint; they are only barely sweet, just enough so that the sweetness offers a balanced counterpoint to the flavour of lemon.
As to the quality of the basic bread, I think it is excellent. But I must add that my appreciation of it has grown greater over time, as I have discovered the particular virtues and best applications of the various sizes and shapes. Be advised, it is not sourdough bread and with regard to texture it tends slightly toward the denser crumb; the crust is crispy and properly substantial and, if one so desires, one can request a loaf baked lighter or darker. I must also add that I am often faced with the not too tragic dilemma of having to decide between getting a basic white Italian loaf or a loaf of the whole wheat bread, which I believe to be the best I've had in town. On the weekends, I am wont to opt for also buying a French loaf; these traditional Italian takes on the French baguette have a more delicate and airier crumb than the
filoni and make beautifully light and crispy and very tasty platforms for sandwiches. The corn bread is also quite delicious as well as unusual.
With regard to the pizza, Masi's product is a fine version of my favourite genre of pizza in Chicago, the basic, humble, simple bakery-style pan pizza, made with bread dough and dressed soberly and simply. At $2.50 for a very large slice (large enough that it warrants being cut in half and packed folded over for ease of handling), this item has become a regular lunch item for my family. But beware, the pizza is popular and often sells out quite early.
One last aspect of the Italian Superior Bakery must be mentioned here. I indicated above that at one point, the Masis had tried to expand the business to include a full salumeria but ended up closing that side of operations. Yet, as an added bonus to those who buy their bread at the store, the Masis also sell a number of basic Italian packaged goods and do so at quite remarkably good prices. The offerings are limited to a few brands of olive oil, canned tomatoes and beans, jarred items such as giardiniera, canned anchovies and tuna, and a range of Don Peppe pasta products. Large cans of Nina brand
pomodori pelati for $1.27 is an excellent bargain and litre bottles of Oro di Sicilia for $5.25 keeps our household well stocked with a fine basic extra virgin olive oil at less than the cost of lower grade oils in most stores. For those who live here in the neighbourhood, this aspect of the bakery is a wonderful convenience.
*******
In Paris today millions of pounds of bread are sold daily, made during the previous night by those strange, half-naked beings one glimpses through cellar windows, whose wild-seeming cries floating out of those depths always makes a painful impression. In the morning, one sees these pale men, still white with flour, carrying a loaf under one arm, going off to rest and gather new strength to renew their hard and useful labor when night comes again. I have always highly esteemed the brave and humble workers who labor all night to produce those soft but crusty loaves...Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870).
The neighbourhood bakery is in most parts of the United States a thing of the past. Admittedly, in strongly ethnic areas they survive -- one thinks of the Mexican
panaderias -- and in upscale urban settings and wealthy suburbs, the recently discovered 'artisanal' approach to bread making is coming to be increasingly represented. But for the most part, Americans have for many decades now consumed primarily bread that is made in large-scale factories, which are typically well removed from places where pedestrians pass by.
During the several years I lived in Belgium and during my many long visits to France and Italy, all countries where bread is taken very seriously, neighbourhood bakeries have survived far better than they have in 'Middle America' and my first real exposure to such small bakeries was in fact in Belgium. Like almost everyone in Leuven, the Flemish city where I lived, I had certain favourite bakeries for specific kinds of bread but also could rely on a small bakery within a relatively few steps of my front door for fresh basic bread and rolls on any and all mornings. But an especially vivid memory of bakeries in Leuven involves not the buying or eating of bread but, in an odd way, the making of bread: After a long evening and night of drinking Belgium's mighty brews with fellow students and ne'er-do-wells, wending my way home through perfectly silent and deserted cobblestone streets in the hours before dawn, I would every now and again pass by a building with one or two basement windows lit up and emanating from these windows were muffled sounds of activity and, if it were a little closer to dawn, the wonderful smell of baking bread.
Perhaps the Parisian bakers of Dumas' times were more vocal than those of nearby Belgium, for I never heard any wild-seeming cries, but otherwise I very much concur with the sentiments Dumas expresses in the citation above. But in addition to admiring those who produce the 'soft but crusty loaves', I have also long been curious about just how professional bread bakers go about their work. Now, these days I am infinitely more likely to be waking up at 4 or 5 a.m. to go to my desk and work than I am to be walking home well-sated from a café, and so I asked Frank Masi if I could come to his bakery and see how he and the others produce the daily bread. The following pictures were all taken at the Italian Superior Bakery over the course of a few visits during which I observed and minimally got to help with the process.
At 3:30 a.m., having just tumbled out of bed and into the frigid January cold of Chicago, I am greeted by this poster for 'La Dolce Vita' hanging near the bakery's front door; an ironic reminder that while some may frolic barefoot in a fountain in the middle of the night with Anita Ekberg, others are setting to work:

The process of making the bread actually starts with a short session the preceding evening; at about 6:30 or 7 p.m., the dough is made, with mixing of the basic white bread dough taking place in this large machine. After mixing, the dough is cut and weighed and rolled into balls, which are then set into wooden 'boxes' for the first rising. For an average size bake, this stage takes something on the order of an hour and a half to two hours.

When the second session starts, one of the first steps is to take the risen balls of dough (pictured below), knock the air out of them, shape them into loaves and return them to the boxes for the second rising.

The actual baking or, as Frank Masi says, 'cooking' doesn't start until the first of the shorter rising loaves have had enough time to rise a second time; thereafter, baking and loaf-making co-occur for a time. Herebelow are some of the first Italian loaves,
filoni, already well along in the 'cooking' process:

Below are pictured some whole wheat loaves which have finished their second rise and are now being placed in the oven:

Frank, who does all his work with that curious mixture of focus and seeming nonchalance, here scores the loaves on the peel:

In a commercial setting, a considerable amount of attention must be spent on the logistical organisation of all the steps of the baking process for all the various items being made that day; all the different tasks have to be integrated into an efficient plan. And one of the factors that a baker must keep careful track of is how the items are arranged inside the oven. For an oven with a capacity of 300 pounds, which has its quirks with regard to hotter and cooler spots, a considerable amount of experience and expertise is required to get the job done well. Here Frank is checking and rearranging loaves as they bake:

A nicely filled bin of freshly baked 2 pound
filoni:

Four hours into his work, as customers are really starting to come into the shop to pick up orders, Frank is still carefully checking and rearranging loaves as they cook:

A still bubbling pizza dressed with sausage rests for a moment beside the oven:

The last breads to be cooked are the pan loaves and the French loaves, which are baked last because their second rising takes longest:

As the baking is almost complete, the task of cleaning up and putting all the boxes and wrapping sheets in order for the next day's work still lies ahead:

The Italian Superior Bakery still has its old fashioned counter, complete with the roller for wrapping paper at the far end. On the counter are displayed a pizza (one slice has already been cut out), the delicious, lemony
taralli, and in the foreground bags of bread crumbs:

The colourful (though slightly faded) sign of Masi's Italian Superior Bakery has become a familiar and very welcome sight to me, with its combination of the Italian
tricolore and the outline of the 'boot':

The bakery occupies two spaces, though all the baking tools and the main counter are in the more southerly space. This last picture, looking north along the eastern side of Western Avenue, also looks back in time, in a sense, for in the distance, the next to last building visible (white, just before the blue awning) is 915 Western Avenue, the first site of Salvatore Masi's Western Avenue Bread bakery and shop:
Italian Superior Bakery933 South Western Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60612
Phone: 312-733-5092
Open: Tuesday-Sunday
Fresh bread baked: Thursday-Sunday.
Antonius
Chicago
January/February 2005
Typos corrected. Post site-move character problems fixed.
Last edited by
Antonius on August 14th, 2005, 1:32 pm, edited 6 times in total.
Alle Nerven exzitiert von dem gewürzten Wein -- Anwandlung von Todesahndungen -- Doppeltgänger --
- aus dem Tagebuch E.T.A. Hoffmanns, 6. Januar 1804.
________
Na sir is na seachain an cath.