Over the past three years, Delawareans have developed a craving for carbs. How else to explain the opening and expansion of bakeries in all three counties?
The newbies, however, are walking in some impressive footsteps. Delaware’s OGs of baked goods have withstood competition from supermarkets and survived ever-changing diet trends. Here are four legends to celebrate.
Bing’s Bakery
In 1946, schoolteachers Selena and Russell Bing purchased Fader’s Bakery, which Gotlieb Fader started on Newark’s Main Street in 1871. He delivered the goods in his horse-drawn wagon. Although he died in 1922, the bakery continued until the Bings bought the business.
The couple later moved the renamed bakery to its present location—a former Methodist parsonage site. Russell came from a family of bakers, but after he died in 1980, Selena worked 55 hours a week to continue his dream.
“My husband used to say that you could teach all day and not be sure of what you’d accomplished,” she told a Morning News reporter in 1985. That wasn’t true of the baking industry, which allowed her to “prove that you’ve done something. …It’s really in your blood.”
Tom and Carla Guzzi would agree. Tom was Bing’s head baker in 2005 when the couple bought the business. Carla continued working at JP Morgan Chase & Co. and working part time at the bakery. Inevitably, she made a choice. “The bakery’s growth and the needs were tremendous,” she explains. “So, I had to make a decision and change from banking to baking.”
The Guzzis feature items unavailable in supermarkets, such as almond puffs, Christmas “wreaths” and Selena Bing’s glace—homemade pound cake filled with German-style chocolate buttercream coated in chocolate.
“We stand firm in our history, and we’re grateful to be part of such a vibrant town.”
—Carla Guzzi, Bing’s Bakery in Newark
The couple diversified with the opening of Bing’s Bake & Brew, a coffee shop in Amstel Square, in 2019 and recently opened a second shop in The Little French Café’s former Main Street site. (The new restaurant still has crêpes on the menu.) Bing’s also has products in Kenny Family ShopRite stores in Delaware.
The Main Street bakery, however, remains the beating heart of the business. “We stand firm in our history, and we’re grateful to be part of such a vibrant town,” Carla says.
253 E. Main St., Newark; 737-5310; bingsbakery.com
Cannon’s Custom Cakes & Bakery
Necessity was the mother of invention for Leah Cannon, whose five children seemingly always needed a birthday cake. When area bakeries refused to make one big enough, she started baking. Soon, friends requested her creations.
In 1975, Leah and Steve Cannon opened a cake and candy supply store in Meadowood Shopping Center. Why candy? Leah couldn’t find cake décor in local shops. By 1985, the cake business was booming, and the Astro Shopping Center location opened. The following year, their son Steve took over.
Steve’s nephew Brandon Byerly now runs the beloved bakery. “I grew up in the business, so it was a passion from the beginning,” says Byerly, who bought Cannon’s after attending grad school. “I enjoy making the cakes and coming up with the different designs.”
While custom cakes are the full-service bakery’s specialty, Byerly keeps up with the trends. For instance, Cannon’s made 250 4-inch pies for a wedding.
The bakery is moving by early fall to make way for new construction. However, Cannon’s will stay in the Astro Shopping Center. Indeed, Byerly isn’t planning on leaving the area anytime soon. “Maybe someday my kids will take over,” he says. The chances of that are good, considering he has five children. “It would be good to keep it in the family,” he concludes.
Astro Shopping Center, Newark; 368-7900; cannonscakes.com
Fortunata’s Bakery
In France, shoppers visit the boulangerie for bread and hit the pâtisserie for pastries, such as macarons. Many American bakeries blur the line, but not Fortunata’s in Milford, which sells authentic Italian hearth-baked bread and rolls.
The shop is owned by Ruth Clifton, who apprenticed under Armand Argenio, a South Philly native who cut his teeth in his grandmother’s Italian bakery. “He spoke Italian and Sicilian—Italian all the way through—and [was] a very tough baker,” recalls Clifton, who grew up in Rehoboth Beach.
The baker and his wife, Josephine, had retired to southern Delaware but didn’t stay idle for long. When their daughter Paula opened Bread-N-Butter in 1992, Argenio helped launch the business. Initially, customers came for cakes and doughnuts. That isn’t surprising considering that Lofland Bakery, founded in 1948, previously occupied the space. (Until she died in 1989, Gladys Lofland was known as the “pie lady.”)
By the time Clifton’s daughter started working at Bread-N-Butter, Argenio ran the business. Clifton joined part time, and when the night baker left, she worked the night shift five nights a week for 15 years. With seven children and a farm, Clifton and her husband appreciated the extra income.
When the 80-plus-year-old Argenio retired again, Clifton took over and renamed the business Fortunata’s for the stray cat that Argenio admired. “People knew the cat,” Clifton explains. “So, they’d know that the bakery was the same—same bread, same rolls. But it would also be me, you know, a little bit different.” When Argenio died in 2018, he left her the business.
Clifton and her son and business partner, Patrick, still use the revolving six-tray oven from Lofland’s tenure. Six-inch football-shaped rolls are bestsellers. However, the bakery makes torta rolls because many customers are from Latin American countries. Haitians come for the petit pain (small bread). Meanwhile, retirees from New Jersey and New York buy the hoagie rolls.
To be sure, although you’ll find scones, cookies and Danish, the Italian bread remains the star attraction. Argenio, no doubt, would be proud.
602 SE Fourth St., Milford; 422-5462; fortunatasbakery.com
Serpe & Sons Bakery
Domenico and Lucille Serpe founded this bastion of bread in 1952 in Wilmington. By 1964, the bakery had outgrown the Madison Street digs and moved to Elsmere. Since then, generations of Delawareans have made the pilgrimage to Elsmere for tomato pie, Italian rolls, pastries and cookies. It’s hard to get in the door during the Christmas and Easter seasons. As for wholesale, the list of customers reads like the who’s who of Little Italy: Capriotti’s, Attillio’s and Mrs. Robino’s.
Fans still remember the pain of doing without their custom cakes and Kaiser rolls after a devastating fire destroyed much of the building on December 24, 2015. It took 10 months to rebuild, but the family prevailed. Four of the Serpes’ sons run the business today, and a third generation is involved.
1411 Kirkwood Highway, Elsmere; 994-1868; serpesbakery.com
Related: Sprinkles Italian Bakery Is a Sweet Success in Wilmington