Angelo Revels was my first boss. Back in 1965-66, I was a cleanup kid and pizza cook at his neighborhood bakery on Palos Verdes Blvd. in Torrance, Calif. It was a great experience.
I really started working several years earlier, though, with a neighborhood lawn-mowing route. But Angelo Revels Bakery was the first place I drew a paycheck.
Angelo, now in his early 80s and living in the Palos Verdes area, has always been proud of his Greek heritage. He closed the bakery just recently, but for many years Angelo carried a variety of Greek specialties among the breads, rolls, cakes and pastries in his display cases.
The bakery was divided into three sections. The showroom with cash register, glass display cases and a few tables faced the street. In the evening, this was the strict domain of the high-school girls who worked with the customers. Directly behind was the baking area with a big gas-fired brick oven, the bakers' work tables, rotating pie oven, flour bins, mixers, refrigerators and cooling racks -- plus my work station . . . a double deep sink for washing every instrument, tray, pot and pan the bakers used during the day.
In a smaller room in the back, Angelo created his masterpieces -- frosted cakes of various shapes and sizes, including double and triple-decker wedding cakes.
Mornings, the bakers turned out dozens of loaves of bread, baguettes (for the local restaurant trade), dinner roles, muffins, cupcakes, doughnuts, pastries, éclairs, pies, cakes and other desserts. I came on after school at 3:30 -- tied on my white baker's apron -- and did my cleanup and mopping chores, while getting ready to make pizzas later in the evening.
Angelo was a good businessman who got in on the take-out pizza trend early. Since the big brick oven wasn't being used in the afternoon, why not turn it into a profit center by cooking pizzas? This was years before pizza restaurants were commonplace.
My pizza prep included grinding blocks of mozzarella cheese by hand, turning whole cooked tomatoes into sauce with the huge copper colander, thin slicing two-foot-long pepperoni sticks and rolling out dough to have enough pizza crusts handy when the rush started. And I almost forgot . . . folding together cardboard pizza boxes and stacking them near the oven.
On Fridays the rush started at 5 p.m. and lasted until we closed at 8 p.m. Wives ordered pizzas by phone for their husbands to pick up on the way home from work. Nothing better than a hot pizza for the family during evening television. A typical extra large pizza with the works included a hefty helping of cheese, sausage, pepperoni, onions, mushrooms, black olives and sometimes anchovies. We didn't have fancy names for the pizzas yet and a loaded pizza was way less than $5.
During busy times, we often baked 15 large pizzas in the oven at once. Sometimes it was like leading an orchestra with pizzas going in and coming out of the oven at different times. And retrieving hot pizza pans with those 5-foot-handled wooden paddles was no easy task either.
But it was all fun and part of growing up. Angelo Revels has left a lasting impression on me . . . as have those sounds and smells of that wonderful bakery.
