The best selling products at Porto's Bakery are the Cuban cake with pineapple-custard filling, meat pies, chicken pies, potato balls, and the mini fancy desserts.
One of the unique features of this bakery is that unlike most bakeries, all our cakes are double-layered; each layer of cake is topped with a layer of filling. That's what makes our cakes richer in flavor, moister, and taller (resulting in more servings).
Porto's also prides itself on using the finest ingredients, whether domestic or imported. Our flour, eggs, sugar, and butter are from America. However, our guava come from Brazil while our chocolate comes from Belgium and France. Our coconut comes from the Phillipines while our pur vanilla is shipped from Tahiti.
Different from the meringue found on lemon meringue pie, our old-fashioned meringue is our most frequently requested icing. Gasparini, a Swiss pastry chef of Italian origin, invented meringue and first served it to nineteenth-century French royalty. Today, there are primarily three kinds of meringue: Italian, Swiss, and French (a.k.a. ordinary meringue). Even though the ingredients for each type of meringue are essentially the same (egg whites, confectioners' sugar, and sugar), the techniques used to prepare them, and the resulting products, are distinguishable. We at Porto's use Italian-style meringue. This Old World recipe is simple in nature, but its preparation and application require tremendous skill. This is why it is not widely used, and why our cakes are unique. Customers enjoy its no-fat content, lightness, shiny veneer, silky feel, and its ability to endure hot weather, unlike whipped toppings. Some of our most popular products, such as Cuban Cake and Tres Leches, are finished off with meringue. For the Tres Leches, the meringue is glazed with a flame using a propane torch, giving it a look and taste similar to roasted marshmallow.
The holiday are a busy time at Porto's. For most major holidays - New Year's Day, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Mother's & Father's Day, Independence Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas - we offer specially shaped and decorated cakes, cookies, and cupcakes. From Thanksgiving to New Year's Eve we supply freshly baked apple pies and pumpkin pies, along with Croquembouche, one of our most popular items./p>
All of our breads and pastries are baked daily. In most cases, MANY times a day, depending on how fast they go out the door. We bake bread at least four times a day.
Cuban crackers are one of the most labor-intensive products - the complete process takes almost 24 hours! The preparation begins the night before when flour, water, and small amounts of yeast are mixed to form a first-dough (a.k.a. "sponge"). The sponge is left to ferment for 12 hours at room temperature. The next morning the final dough is prepared by adding water, salt, shortening, and flour. Using an old-fashioned doughbreaker machine, the dough gets kneaded until the proper consistency is achieved. A master baker and three assistants then thinly sheet the dough, cut the crackers, and lay them on baking sheets. The baking sheets are then placed in a proofer where they ferment for an additional hour. They are then baked at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. The crackers are then cooled for approximately one hour before they are placed in bags. It takes 40-50 crackers to fill one bag. This very old-fashioned process, using very little yeast and long fermentation periods, give Cuban crackers a wonderful flavor, light texture, and a long shelf-life without using any preservatives. In European countries they are known as "marine crackers" because they keep well, and thus provided weeks of nourishment for shipping crews. Cuban crackers are best kept sealed in their original bag at room temperature and should not be refrigerated).