BY MAGGIE BEAMGUARD
Insider Editor
When Delucia’s Bake Shop opened last summer, it made for a sweet treat for Seven Lakes, an area hungry for new restaurant choices.
Residents line up at the pastry and bread-lined cases to indulge carb cravings. Owner Dena Delucia keeps the shelves of the old-school New York-styled bakery at 4245 Seven Lakes Plaza, West End, stocked with a large variety of goods with a focus on traditional Italian and Jewish products.
Delucia serves up her good-natured, New York attitude along with customer orders for cakes, challah bread, sourdough, rye, bagels, rugelach, Maritozzi (an Italian doughnut), cannoli and Sfogliatella (a classic Neapolitan pastry originating in a 17th century monastery) and more.
The bakery especially appeals to area transplants to Seven Lakes like customers Bob and Linda Rinaldi craving the taste of “home.”
Bob grew up in an American Italian family, and enjoyed his mother’s traditional Italian baking of pies and wedding cookies and all manner of goodies especially around the Christmas and Easter holidays.
When loading up on goods at the bakery a few months ago, the Rinaldis noticed that Delucia was featuring pies. Bob asked Delucia if she ever had a ricotta pie. She had not. But she told him to bring her the recipe. She would toy around with it.
According to Delucia, customers often ask her about the old recipes they fondly remember.
“They ask for stuff that grandma used to make when they were kids. I always tell people, if you bring me a recipe, I’ll mess around with it when I have some time,” said Delucia.
Between the bake shop’s three employees, including two full-time bakers, their six flour-coated hands are full. Testing a recipe takes time. Delucia needs three tries to explore the ins and outs of something new.
The Rinaldis took Delucia up on her offer, bringing in recipes for sweet ricotta pie and rice ricotta pie. The pies are traditionally made at Easter. But since pie is pie, it doesn’t have to wait for a date on the calendar.
Delucia put the recipes in her recipe book where they waited until she had some downtime. “One night I pulled it out and tried it. I had some friends who grew up in New York come and taste some samples.”
The taste-testers critiqued the attempt. One said “this is just like my aunt used to make.” Delucia made some tweaks and then summoned the Rinaldis in early December.
“Dena called us and said she needed us to come over and test the pies she made,” said Bob. “She didn’t want to put them out until she had someone to test them.”
The Rinaldis made haste to Delucia’s where they were served individual tester pies. “She did a phenomenal job,” Bob said. “We talked a little about the crust and that kind of thing. We blessed it. And then she brought out two full pies.”
It had been years since the Rinaldis had a taste of this dish. Bob reckons his mother made at least 10 of these pies each Easter for their large family. “That’s the tradition,” he said. “I don’t believe Linda and I ever made one. So this really resurrected, you know, a nice memory.”
Delucia delights when her customers taste her traditional baked goods and share they are swept back to memories of grandma’s cooking. “And course,” Delucia said with her characteristic cheek, “Grandma’s been dead for 40 years, right? So how cool is that to bring back that memory.”
It gives her chills to think about it. “I do this, and it’s like my little way of making the world a little better, someone a little happier.”
Delucia, who retired after 23 years from the Army, believes food has the power to comfort and to bring people together.
“Food is almost a love language for me,” she said “If I really like you – man I’m going to make you something in my oven.”
When she was deployed in Afghanistan, she played a role in establishing a USO center in Kandahar during the 2008 surge. Land was tight with 30,000 troops moving in, but confronting a reluctant boss, she advocated for a place where the men and women could come and get a taste of home.
In retirement, she savors bringing similar nibbles from home to this community.
“You’ve got people who are far from home for whatever reason — they moved here, and they love it, and they should — but they miss some of this stuff from home,” she said “I’m giving them something from home.”
That something, she says, is “a little New York attitude, southern hospitality and European flavor.”
The customers, including the Renaldis, eat it up.
“The bakery is just phenomenal,” Bob said. “It’s probably the best new business that has happened in a long time. I hope people will support it.”
Contact Maggie Beamguard at maggie@thepilot.com.
