Sisters carry on baking tradition at Scialo Bros.

WHAT’S IN A NAME: There are no brothers at Scialo Bros. Bakery. The Federal Hill staple is owned by sisters Carol Scialo Gaeta, right, and Lois Scialo Ellis. / PBN PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE
WHAT’S IN A NAME: There are no brothers at Scialo Bros. Bakery. The Federal Hill staple is owned by sisters Carol Scialo Gaeta, right, and Lois Scialo Ellis. / PBN PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE

There are no brothers now at Scialo Bros. Bakery. The business that’s held a place on Atwells Avenue on Federal Hill in Providence since 1916 has been owned and operated by sisters Carol Scialo Gaeta and Lois Scialo Ellis, who grew up living above the shop, since 1993.
When they talk about running a business that begins operating at 3 a.m., when the bread baking begins, they’re more than a team.
“Two?” said Gaeta. “We are one. One of us couldn’t do it without the other.”
They lived on the second floor, above the shop, when their father ran the bakery.
Their grandparents lived on the third floor. The bakery was always a part of their lives.
“I was out in the front working the register when I was 9 years old,” said Ellis.
But the sisters never intended to go into the bakery business.
“We went to college. We had other careers,” said Gaeta, who worked for several years as a medical secretary. Ellis worked as a teacher for 34 years and taught history at East Greenwich High School.
“I love history and majored in political science. In a different time, I would have loved to go to law school,” Ellis said. “But when we were raised, women were teachers, nurses or secretaries.”
Their career plans changed when their father died in 1993 at 103. He was ill for only a short time before his death, and had been involved in running the business from home. He left the business to his three daughters. One lives in Florida and wasn’t interested. So Gaeta and Ellis bought her out.
That’s when the work began. They had to do major upgrades, including moving the oil tank from underground to above ground. There was a fire from one of the big brick ovens and they had to shut down for a year to do repairs.
“It was very difficult for women to get a business loan in 1993,” said Ellis, who is the business manager, among other things, for the bakery. “We went to several places. We finally got a loan from Bank Rhode Island.” Along with the steady increase of women in executive-level management and company ownership nationwide, changes in society were reflected in the back shop of Scialo Bros. Bakery.
“When we were growing up, women didn’t go back here,” Gaeta said, standing in one of several expansive preparation and baking rooms, lined by a long wall of three brick ovens circa 1920, two of them still working. “Women didn’t go into the shop. I still almost can’t believe we’re working back here.”
Now there are many women working in the back shop of the bakery, preparing, decorating and carrying trays of swirled pastries out to the front display cases.
Gaeta’s own perspective changed over time.
Her work as a medical secretary allowed time for what she called her “baking gene” to blossom, always baking at home. Then she learned the complex rituals and techniques of her father’s shop working with one of the long-timer bakers there. She also worked with a caterer in East Greenwich.
The sisters have remained devoted to the traditional “no shortcuts” baking that’s the signature of the bakery. Fillings made from fresh cream. Specialty pastries such as sfogliatelle, with the dough carefully cut, the seminola cream specially made in a process that takes many steps and many hours. Bread made only with flour, water, yeast and salt – no preservatives.
“It has one-day shelf life. We never sell bread two days in a row,” said Ellis. “We send a lot of what we don’t sell to food pantries and soup kitchens.”
Tradition is complemented by the advantages of online marketing. Mail orders are part of the business and a steady stream of one-hour tours is booked, often during the week, and even more frequently on Saturdays.
On a Saturday morning in April, the first tour group of 30 visitors from Wallingford, Conn., arrives in a big tour bus. The group’s day trip to Providence was arranged by a recreation center. Gaeta boards the bus and gives a few minutes of bakery history. First she tells them the name is pronounced “shallow, like shallow water.” The visitors learn the bakery was in the process of being sold after her father died, but the sale fell through and the sisters stepped up to take over.
As the visitors file off the bus, they join other sidewalk viewers “oohing” and “ahhing” at the bakery window. One showstopper is a many-layered cake, every inch decorated with white roses. There are cakes in the shape of ladies handbags and hats with flowers.
Inside, it’s a slow walk past the bakery cases with pineapple upside-down cakes, the rings of pineapple dotted with cherries. There’s glistening apple strudel, butter rum cake, cappuccino walnut cake and amaretti cookies.
In the back shop, the tourists gather around tables prepared with cups of coffee and samples of the bakery’s delights, including colorful Russian tea cake, baked with pressed cubes of pink and green. They get a look at white wedding cakes, confirmation cakes and birthday specialty cakes with pictures.
Visitors get a look into the foundation of the bakery, when one of the huge brick ovens, 14-by-14-feet is fired up.
“I’m blown away. Those ovens are so cool,” said Rene Casterlin of Wallingford, Conn. “I’ve always liked to do cake decorating and this is awesome. I’m very impressed.”
“Your father is definitely smiling down,” offers one member of the group.
As the visitors leave with boxes and bags of bakery goods, another group, a walking tour of Federal Hill, files in. It’s a two-tour Saturday for the sisters, who have come full circle from their youth living above the shop and would have it no other way. •

No posts to display