SWEET

I decided one day, after talking to Maria Coletti, who helps her father and sister run Panneficio Americana, that there was a story to be had next door to the bakery. I had seen Luigi come in from time to time, and I had been talking to Maria about how to translate some things for an application Luigi was filing to become a pastry chef on one of the Costa Cruise Ships. I knew that the bar next door had the usual assortment of early morning breakfast dolces, as well as cookies, and gelato in the summer, but I did not know that they made their own stuff. Well, they do, and Luigi is in charge of the making of it. And yes, I had sampled their cornetti and apple tart and ricotta ravioli and a few other things too good to mention.

Ah Ha, a pastry chef right next door. Why don't I get up early one morning, and do a piece about pastries in Sciacca. I got Maria and Paola to lie about me and say good things, and set it up with Luigi to come in at seven one morning. Wow, I would not even have to get up early. Welllllllllll, It seems that I made a mistake. I heard sette, he said sei. Oh well. When I got their, the donuts, the large ricotta ravioli, the creme rolls (unfilled) were already for the fryer. Now I had made donuts when I was in the Kiwanis Club in Fulton, and we had a machine that cut the donuts and plopped them into the hot grease and special sticks to turn them and all that. Luigi's donuts were huge, I mean really huge. And he only made about twenty of them each day. Of course, he also made about twenty large ricotta filled ravioli, about forty small ricotta filled ravioli, twenty cream filled roles (large) and twenty cream filled rolls (small), and of course plain, marmalade, nutella, and crema filled cornetti (forty each) and tavola caldo pizza and sandwiches and on and on and on, plus special orders.

I hung out in the background as he and his assistant silently did their work. The most talk was when the neighborhood bum came in to get his morning beer and cigarette from the guys. Other than that, they knew their jobs and just did them. I was not sure when I washed up the mixing bowl if I had somehow screwed up their rhythm. I think not, as they did not seem to notice enough to say anything.

Luigi, the taller gentleman, was in charge of most of the dolces, while Tonino seemed to concentrate on the pizzas, sandwiches, and eventually batches of about four hundred sugar cookies. Then he started to work on a special order birthday cake, and then check the orders coming up for Saturday, to make sure they had enough supplies for that and Sunday as well.

I should mention that on Sundays, it is usual for children to return to the wife's parent's house for dinner, and it is also usual to bring a tray of dolce sufficient to feed the whole family for several generations back, with enough left over to take care of family members well into the next millennium. So Sunday is really the big dolce fest.

After about two hours, I decided that I was really there on the wrong day. I need to go in ON TIME on a Sunday morning, and I need to watch how all the little pastries are made. The one's my friend Ray Leone taught me to like at Rocco's on Bleeker Street in the west village (don't go to the place next door, it is not as good, even though it looks better).

So, I am sad to say, having packed up a couple of donuts for the road, (complitments of Acursio, the owner) I will have to return to this or another dolceria (actually pasticerrea) and do another sweet entry. Hope you can take it. I am pretty sure I can.