THE CUBA REVIEW. 



21 



BREAD BAKING IN CUBA. 



Native Ovens Not Well Built — American Bread Well Liked — Real American 



Bakeries Needed. 



Cuban bakeries are not just what the 

 American population, andl in fact, the 

 Spanish and many of the Cuban popu- 

 lation in Cuba, desire. There are nu- 

 merous Cuban laakeries in every city and 

 town. These bakeries do not resemble 

 the good old-fashioned American bakery 

 by any means. The bakeries and the 

 eating houses are often joined. The 

 baking department is in the -rear of the 

 building, and things are not always ex- 

 tremely clean. The men work in the 

 heat and are practically without clothing. 

 The ovens are built of brick, stone, 

 cement and sand. There are always cob- 

 webs and dust about. The bread is not 

 made so white and soft as the American 



^'^- 5 



baker makes his bread. The Cubans 

 prefer the hard, brittle crust on the 

 loaves, and they like to have their loaves 

 good and long. 



The native bakers turn out a great 

 many buns, and these buns are baked with 

 a crust as hard as crackers. You grate 

 your teeth on the crust. It is taken for 

 granted that you will eat your hard- 

 crusted bread and rolls with coffee, and 

 saturate the coffee through the bread. 

 Hence the coffee-saloon and the bread- 

 baking institution run along well to- 

 gether. 



There are bakeries independent of the 

 eating establishments, and these bakeries 

 supply the people. There are carts run 

 the same as in the United States. The' 

 bread costs more here, because prac- 

 tically all of the flour is imported. There 

 is a duty to be paid and cost of freight. 

 There are losses in weight and by theft. 

 There are the rats to eat into the flour, 

 and oftentimes the wet gets into it and 

 destroys much of it. All these losses 

 must be added to the cost of turning 



out bread and rolls for the' consumer. 

 Therefore prices run high even though 

 the native labor in the bake house is 

 much less than the cost of labor in the 

 bake house at home. The American 

 bakeries are opened up in cities and 

 towns in this island', and the first thing 

 you know everyone employed is a na- 

 tive. It is like the American laundry 

 proposition here. Flaring signs are put 

 out of "American Laundry," and "Ameri- 

 can Bakery" and you go into the office 

 and perhaps you will find one man, the 

 boss, who is an American. Everyone else' 

 is a native, and the work is mostly done 

 on native lines. What is wanted in Cuba 

 is. a real American bakery with the 

 American workers and American devices 

 for making the bread. Something more 

 than the sign out in front is expected in 

 these days. 



There are trains running regularly out 

 of Havana for the provinces, and an 

 American bakery in Havana could send 

 out its product to the agencies in the 

 towns each morning. 



While the Cubans look for the hard 

 crust bread, they like the genuine Ameri- 

 can loaf. In some' of the restaurants and 

 hotels where they cater to the tourists, 

 there are samples of home made Ameri- 

 can loaves put out in the show-window 

 (as in Fig. i). Also there are the sam- 

 ples of native bread (as in Fig. 2). A 

 long straight roll is quite popular in 

 Cuba. We miss the clear white bread. 

 There is always a yellowish tinge to the 

 domestic bread. The American arrny 

 bakers are turning out some nice white 

 bread in their field bakeries, and the 

 native bakers come for miles to see how 

 it is done. The army flour is of better 

 grade than is usually received by the Cu- 

 ban bakers. The Cuban bakers strive to 

 get cheap flour as a rule, resulting in 

 poor grades being received. This could 

 be' corrected readily in the event of start- 

 ing an American bakery to turn out high 

 grade stuffs. 



In Fig. 3 is a drawing of one of the 

 native ovens. These ovens are often 

 built by the workmen who intend to do 

 the dough mixing and baking. The 

 mason is always not called in, owino- to 

 a desire to save cost of construction. 

 The native ovens are not always well 

 built. The stone work is frequently 

 loosely assembled. The. cement used is 

 rackish and usually crumbles premature- 

 ly, making the oven leak cold air and in- 

 juring the bread in process of baking. 

 I have seen leaks rectified in some of the 

 bakeries by heaping sand over the oven. 



