29 Mar 2007 1421H

I stepped back into 1920

as I always do when I step into the Scafuri Bakery at 1337 W. Taylor St. in Chicago’s Little Italy, a part of which was paved, as so often happens here in Chicago under the Daley administration, over the protests of the residents to make way for the University of Illinois at Chicago, or UIC, as we call it now, which used to be called Circle Campus, because of the traffic circle off the Eisenhower/Dan Ryan interchange, and even more distantly, the University of Illinois at Navy Pier, but, that was a long time ago when it was still at Navy Pier. All of that is now distant in the past as townhouses and upscale dwellings are quickly dominating the landscape.

I pray these new residents serve to keep the venerable Scafuri Bakery going into the next century. Scafuri Bakery is quite possibly my favorite bakery in Chicago. I grew up near Maier’s Bakery in the near north suburbs, which still retains its original charm amidst mass-marketization, but Scafuri is special, more so than the dozen or so Cantonese bakery-cafes, or cha chaan teng, I live among in Chinatown, and even more so than the legendary Lutz Bakery on Montrose, whose Black Forest Cake was often spoken about in hushed, reverential tones as we grew up.

One reviewer sniffed that the Italian bread looked a bit sad, but you will note he did not eat it. In fact, IMHO, it has the finest Italian bread in the city, which I discovered quite by accident one morning shopping to prepare a Italian-style family meal. On the morning in question it was so fresh out of the oven the proprietress refused to slice it, and our patience that evening was well rewarded with a crisp crust, a fine crumb, whose aroma filled the mouth with a kind of hearty warmth. The long johns are fantastic, and at 4 for a dollar, I felt like I was ripping the elderly lady behind the counter off. There is the pan pizza for lunch which I cannot remember trying. But who cares, really, when we have the sfogliatelle and the St. Joseph’s cake.

I first heard about the sfogliatelle from Daniel Pinkwater on NPR, who was the author of Wingman and the Snarkout Boys novels I enjoyed in my youth. As usual when he describes food, his effulgent description of the pastry seems almost impossibly good, to which my description can’t do any justice, so I’ll just let you listen to it.

a Sfogliatelle

But I saw my first sfogliatelle only recently, on an outing with S. in San Francisco’s North Beach. I skipped it at the time, but now, here, at Scafuri, was the real thing, and I would not be denied. They seemed impossibly pale to me. I am thinking these were unfinished, as I discovered when I bit past the pale layers of pastry. They would be best served maybe with a few more minutes of warmth in a toaster oven, with a little powdered sugar, just to crisp it up a bit, bring a little color into the shell as you can see above, and enhance the flavor of the sweet, citrusy ricotta inside. . .

A Zeppole, or in the plural, zeppoli

My friend Elvin got the St. Joseph’s Cake, or the zeppole, which is a fried cream puff like pastry with some custard and maybe some berries on top as you can see here. No report on its tastiness as yet.

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