La Segunda Central Bakery
Over the past century, historic La Segunda Central Bakery has grown from serving the local Cuban community in Ybor City, FL, to distributing traditional Cuban bread from coast to coast.
For the complete story on La Segunda Central, see “Más Cubano at La Segunda Central Bakery.”
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Over the past century, historic La Segunda Central Bakery, based in Tampa, FL, has grown from serving the local Cuban community in Ybor City, FL, to distributing traditional Cuban bread, among other baked goods, from coast to coast.
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The story of La Segunda Central Bakery begins with a man and a dream. The year was 1898, and Spain and the United States briefly found themselves engaged in the Spanish-American War. Juan Moré traveled from Spain to Cuba to serve. The war itself lasted just over three months, but Juan stayed in Cuba. Years later, he traveled to the Ybor City neighborhood of Tampa, carrying a recipe and traditional process for baking Cuban bread.
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Juan Moré and some cigar makers opened three bakeries: La Primera, La Segunda and La Tercera. When the La Primera and La Tercera bakeries closed shop, Juan bought La Segunda, continuing to bake 36-inch-long loaves of Cuban bread. His sons―Ricardo, Raymond and Antonio―eventually joined the family business, now known as La Segunda Central Bakery, and years later, Raymond’s and Anthony’s sons—Raymond Jr. and Anthony Jr.—entered the business and continued its growth. Today, the bakery is run by Anthony Jr., along with his son, Copeland, the fourth generation of the family to join the business.
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While some aspects of the bakery have grown modernized, the recipe and process for its traditional Cuban bread has largely remained intact. After rolling, panning and laying the traditional palmetto leaf across the top of the bread—a La Segunda signature—the loaves are moved to the retarder, and then to an spot outfitted with high-powered fans to subtly harden the exterior, a key step in creating the characteristic cracker-crisp exterior of the loaf, while maintaining a soft, tender crumb inside.
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La Segunda’s Cuban bread is made with high-gluten spring wheat flour specially created for the bakery. Today, the bakery produces an average of 15,000 loaves daily during the busy season, along with other products.
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La Segunda Central bread still feeds the greater Tampa area, but it also goes to customers across the country. The bakery still crafts traditional 36-inch loaves of its Cuban bread, each with a palmetto leaf baked atop the crust to naturally score it.
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The 18-inch loaf—a “half loaf”—is now the most-common type of Cuban bread sold to customers outside of the Tampa area, fully baked and shipped frozen, so customers can thaw and use what they need based on demand.
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La Segunda Central offers a variety of baked goods. Its coca rolls are a sugar-sweetened, soft, fluffy style of hamburger buns—products ideally suited to today’s booming “better burger” businesses.
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La Segunda Central also operates a retail bakery, offering pastries and other sweet goods like apple turnovers, Danishes, muffins, doughnuts, cannoli, éclairs, Spanish flan, brownies, bread pudding, cheesecake, napoleons and cookies. It’s also a day-long foodservice destination, offering Cuban toast (buttered, toasted Cuban bread), breakfast bowls and breakfast sandwiches (also served on Cuban bread), traditional Cuban sandwiches, Sicilian muffaletta, salads like Mojo Chicken Caesar, meat pies, scacciata (Sicilian pizza served cold), deviled crab (crab meat croquettes), empanadas and chorizo rolls.
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A top sweet selection from La Segunda Central’s retail bakery is the Latin-accented guava turnover—a best-seller—and Puerto Rican quesitos (cheese turnovers).
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Today, this family bakery is in its fourth generation, with Copeland More running the business.