Most people assume Cuban bread comes from Cuba. It doesn't. The loaf you'd recognize today — long, lean, slightly sweet, with that distinctive palmetto-leaf split running down the spine — was first baked in Ybor City, Tampa, in 1915. By a Catalan immigrant. Who'd learned to bake during a war.
The Catalan Connection
Juan Moré was born in Catalonia. He fought in the Spanish-American War, stationed in Cuba, where he tasted a particular kind of bread baked in the island's Spanish bakeries — a long Mediterranean-style loaf, soft inside, crackling crust outside, made with lard rather than butter.
When the war ended, Moré didn't go back to Spain. He came to Tampa, where a thriving Spanish, Cuban, and Italian immigrant community had built Ybor City as the cigar-making capital of the United States. The neighborhood had factories, cafés, social clubs — and an enormous appetite for bread.
Why Ybor City Made the Bread
Tampa in 1915 was a uniquely concentrated immigrant economy. Cigar rollers worked long shifts and ate Cuban-style lunches in the factories — meaning bread had to arrive every morning, fresh, in enough volume to feed thousands of workers per day.
Moré opened a small bakery, then a larger one. La Segunda — "the second" — opened on 15th Street in 1915 and has baked Cuban bread there continuously ever since. Same address. Same recipe. Four generations of the same family.
The Palmetto-Leaf Split
The signature mark down the center of an authentic Cuban loaf isn't a decorative score. It's pressed in with a literal frond of palmetto leaf — a native Florida palm — before baking. The leaf burns away in the oven and leaves a perfectly straight, lightly charred groove that helps the bread split cleanly when you cut it.
It's a Tampa innovation. You won't find it in Spain. You won't find it in Cuba.
— On the topic of authenticity
If the loaf doesn't have a palmetto-leaf split, it's not Tampa-style Cuban bread.
The four-foot 36″ loaf is the most distinctive form, but the 18″ shorter loaf is what most restaurants spec for individual sandwiches.
See the Cuban Bread spec →From One Bakery to Forty-Six Distributor Locations
For most of its history La Segunda was a Tampa-only operation. That changed in the late 20th century when foodservice distributors — Sysco, US Foods, PFG, GFS, Ben E. Keith, Cheney Brothers — started carrying the frozen 270-day-shelf-life Cuban bread program. Today the loaf reaches buyers in 35+ states.
But the dough is still mixed at 2512 N. 15th Street. The same building Juan Moré opened in 1915.
Further reading
If you serve Cuban sandwiches in your restaurant and want the bread that defines the Tampa style: browse the wholesale lineup, or read about how to thaw and serve our frozen Cuban bread without losing the crust.
— Outline draft. To be expanded with photographs from the family archive, primary-source quotes from generational interviews, and references to Tampa Historical Society materials.