bake - November 2017 - 38

PORTO'S
BAKERY & CAFÉ
Southern California-based Porto's Bakery traces its

pastries, and the bakery's newest top seller is the Milk 'N

roots to Manzanillo, Cuba, where Raul Porto's mother,

Berries cake - a twist on a classic Tres Leches but more

Rosa, had worked as a home economics teacher before

indulgent, ﬁlled with fresh blackberries, blueberries,

she began to sell cakes from the family home. The

strawberries and fresh cream. It's served as a parfait, like

original recipe followed her 2,599 miles to Los Angeles

a verrine (a small thick-glass container that contains a

in 1971. Rosa had a well-established business once the

liquid or solid layered dessert with no base). "In Europe,

family left for Southern California, where Rosa resumed

everything is in a verrine, and we decided to bring

her home bakery business. "Within a few years," her son

verrine into our bakery," Salazar says.

recalls, "she couldn't do it out of the house anymore."
Another European-inspired dessert now at Porto's
Today, Porto's Bakery & Café continues to build on this

comes in the form of a roulade, French for roll. They

momentum with the spring 2017 opening of its newest

make a dulce de leche and cream roulade (rolled into

location, and ﬁrst store in Orange County, California. For

a jelly roll), as well as a version with cream cheese and

Raul Porto, this one is different than any other in the

guava. Cubans love guava, and one of Porto's long-

family's 40 years of operating retail bakeries in Southern

time best sellers is a cream cheese and guava pastry.

California because it marks their ﬁrst entry into the

Salazar describes the essence of their menu as a

tourism sector. The new store is one block from Knott's

"quilt," a patchwork of everything that comes together

Berry Farm and roughly 10 minutes from Disneyland.

beautifully.

The company has evolved into one of the nation's most

"We are Cuban, but we are also a little bit of every-

successful family-owned retail bakeries, including four

thing," he says. "We want to offer the ﬂavors of the

popular retail stores - three in Los Angeles County,

tropics. But we also want to take what is happening in

where nearly 10 percent of the nation's Hispanic popula-

Europe and put our twist on it with something that our

tion of 57 million live. Porto's has an estimated 6 million

customers will understand. We have to stay true to our

customers every year,, making it extremely important

customers, but give them options for what is new and

to keep the menu fresh and exciting. Innovation deﬁnes

exciting." As customers enter the 25,000-square-foot

every move they make.

bakery, they are immersed in a multitude of sensory

Tony Salazar, who is vice president of production and

and juice bar, a pastry station where artisans ﬁnish off

oversees quality control and innovation, says the Buena

individual pastries in full view, and a huge glass window

Park store design is driven by a quest to bring the

to watch cake decorators working their magic on

experience of baking and cake decorating from the

marble-top, stainless-steel tables illuminated by copper

back of the house to the front. They introduced new

light ﬁxtures above.

38 < NOV 2017 | bakemag.com

JOHN UNREIN

experiences: bountiful bread racks, a fresh-brew coffee
http://www.bakemag.com
bake - November 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of bake - November 2017
