Providence City News: Scialo Brothers Bakery

From the City News interview series...

My Business: Sisters Scialo of Scialo Bros. Bakery

When Luigi Scialo migrated to Providence’s Federal Hill ninety-three years ago, he brought with him the rich traditions of his Italian heritage. For almost a century, residents and tourists alike have embraced the most notable contribution that he made to the City of Providence when he, along with his brother Gaetano Scialo, built and ran the Scialo Bros. Bakery on Atwells Avenue.

Today, two of his daughters, Carol Scialo Gaeta and Lois Scialo Ellis, are the proud owners and legacy-keepers of this beloved family business. And while both of them had successful careers before taking on Luigi’s bakery -- Carol was a medical secretary and doing catering on the side and Lois was a public school teacher -- their customers just would not let them close shop when they inherited the business from their father after his death in 1993.

At the onset of the Feast of St. Joseph on March 19 (St. Joseph is also considered in some traditions to be the Patron Saint of Pastry Chefs), City News catches up with Carol and Lois, “the Scialo Sisters,” for an informal history lesson about Italians on Federal Hill, women entrepreneurs, and the sweet origins behind the coveted zeppole.

How long has Scialo Bros. Bakery been operating in Providence?

LOIS: Our dad, Luigi Scialo, came to Providence from a village just outside of Naples in 1914 before World War I. He was the youngest of thirteen children. In 1916, together with his brother Gaetano (the baker), they opened and ran a bakery. The bakery came to Federal Hill in the mid-1920s. When his brother returned to Italy, dad became the sole owner until his death in 1993. He was 103 years old.

Dad had two older children from a previous marriage. In the 1938 hurricane, his first wife and their youngest child were killed.

Two years later, he married our mother, Assunta, who grew up in Federal Hill, and they had three children, Carol, Susan, and me. We all grew up in the tenements upstairs from the bakery. And the bakery was our playground.

CAROL: We only worked in the front of the bakery because back then it was a man’s world. All the bakers were male.

Tell us about your family’s tradition and legacy on Federal Hill.

C: When we were growing up, a lot of the Italian families were living in tenements just like ours when Federal Hill was truly a neighborhood and not just a business district. But now, it’s a real neighborhood too.

L: Yes, do you know where Route 10 runs now? There were rows of tenement housing there back then. Venda Ravioli was the 5&10 Cents Store.

After World War II, major changes affected the way of life here. A lot of the families started to move out. The availability of the automobile, the GI Bills for college – caused a lot of people to move out of the Hill and into the suburbs.

C: We were included in that mix. Our family moved to Warwick.

L: But mom and dad worked here. We were all expected to be here during the holidays and during busy times. Even though we were all married, had children, had careers – the expectation is that when it was busy in the shop, you were here to help in the family business.

When our parents passed away, each of us (the 3 sisters) inherited a piece of the bakery. And so we had to decide what to do with the business.

C: We decided that we were going to sell it. But the deal with the buyer didn’t work out.

L: And prompted by our customers who, when the word got out that we were closing the bakery, started writing us letters, calling us on the phone, and asking us, ‘Where are we going to get our cookies now? Our zeppoles?’ So, we took a step back and decided to rethink things through.

C: We applied for a business loan. With it, we were able to redo a lot of things in the store, and make some needed repairs.

L: Our youngest sister decided not to join so we bought her share of the business and formed an LLC and took out an SBA loan. Back then, women weren’t encouraged to run their own businesses. But through a lot of hard work, we managed to attain a loan.

C: And, after we finally got things organized we had a smoke fire in one of the brick ovens out back.

L: Carol and I weren’t in the shop at the time but the workers called the fire department. When the firefighters came, they flooded the ovens with water and we sustained some water damage throughout the shop.

C: It was the best thing that could’ve happened to us because it forced us to regroup and make further needed improvements to our business. It took us a year to get back on track and we closed the business from June 1993 through April 1994. Also during that time, things started to really happen in the City. Waterfire came to town and the Renaissance was beginning to happen.

L: And so here we are!

Other than the long history and legacy of your father’s business, which is now in your care and ownership, what makes you stand out from the rest?

C: A lot of bakers do the short-cuts. We try to do it the way dad did it because we want our product to be different. We want to be a specialty bakery.

L: We also do it because we really enjoy it!

C: Every Christmas we might be banging our heads against the wall, but you know, I would be baking at home anyway even if I wasn’t doing this now. And all of our kids have baked and helped us at one time or another.

So how do you celebrate St. Joseph’s day?

L: By working very very very hard to satisfy the masses!

C: It’s a fun holiday though. And plus there’s really only one item that gets produced en masse and that is, of course, the zeppola! (Zeppole is the plural form.)


Every St. Joseph's Day, sisters Lois (left) and Carol (right) are swarmed with orders for traditional Italian fried doughnuts, zeppole.

What goes into the Scialo Bros. Zeppola?

L: We make them from scratch.

C: We do sell them all year long – the baked ones. (The traditional one is fried and gets sold during St. Joseph’s Day). We use pure vanilla in our cream.

And I noticed you have two kinds of crème filling?

L&C: Yes, yellow pastry cream and ricotta.

C: The ricotta one was my recipe.

L: Other bakers will sometimes do pre-made ingredients, whether it’s the shell or the cream. There aren’t a whole lot that make their zeppole from scratch.

So how many zeppoles do you sell during St. Joseph’s?

L&C: Thousands!

Do you know where the zeppola came from?

L: It differs from region to region, but I believe it’s a Southern Italian tradition, where most of the people who migrated to Rhode Island came from. You’ll find that people have different ways of baking their pastries, some stray from the traditional ways, others don’t. Like the wandies for example – some dribble them with honey, others sift powdered sugar on top.

C: We’ve also done a few of our own new recipes at the bakery. When our dad ran the place, we had the jimmycakes, the zuppe ingles, the cassato. Now, we also offer a double chocolate cake, a white chocolate cake with pineapple, tiramisu, and so on. We’ve been busy devising new pastries.

In your opinion, do you think that appreciation for the Italian heritage remains strong in Providence today? If so, why?

L: Absolulety! The best evidence of that can be seen in the movie that John Raben did called, Italians on Federal Hill! {Lois shows a picture of her and her sister on the cover of the video, which is also sold at their bakery.} I think that when people come to Providence, Federal Hill is truly a destination for them.

C: In fact, we give tours of the bakery now. We give our guests dessert, some coffee, and a demonstration of how to bake bread. We charge $4.00 per person.

L: Yeah, the tour companies have called on us to participate. We’ve had corporations, garden clubs, and senior citizen groups come.

C: Food is really big thing.

What about your Italian heritage and culture are you most proud of?

C: This whole thing. This, right here. I think food brings people together.

L: Yes, and being able to carry on a family tradition and maintaining the same high standards that our dad set for us all.

In some communities, St. Joseph’s Day doubles also as a kind of father’s day celebration to commemorate the work of Joseph of Nazareth, legal father of Jesus Christ. But the most popular tale, in some parts of the United States, depicts St. Joseph as the hero who brought rain in the midst of a severe drought in Sicily during the middle ages. In gratitude, the Sicilian people would prepare a big feast in his honor.

In a way, the Scialo Sisters – and their extended family – have established their own widespread tradition originating in Providence that allows so many people not only to carry on the ritual of feasting during St. Joseph’s Day, but that also honors the legacy of their dad, Luigi.

Whether it’s the ricotta or the yellow crème zeppola, Carol and Lois still bake all their breads and pastries in the same impressive brick oven that their father and his brother baked in almost a century ago. And while some aspects of the business underwent minor facelifts, and new pastries have been added to the menu, the Scialo Sisters stand proudly by the traditional Italian recipes they inherited from the original Scialo Brothers.