The reason why I have decided to create this magazine is because of my Great Uncle Jesse's Story. His story truly amazes me and I want to share it with anyone willing to listen. It is beautiful as well as tragic. I plan on incorporating this story into my magazine to give the readers a sense of the purpose and understanding of my passion for baking. Here is my summary of an article posted on Wednesday, August 25, 2010 in the Miami Herald, called "Jesse Quesada | Longtime Coral Gables baker" by Elinor J. Brecher. The summary also has some tidbits added from my personal knowledge of the story.
Jesse Quesada worked at an Ybor City restaurant as a teen, and left high school at the age of 17 to join the U.S. Navy. He was shipped out to Okinawa in August 1945 during World War II. While there, he learned baking from Jewish sailors. Once he returned in 1946, he married Dolores Florez, my Great Aunt Loli, and began working for a 42-store commercial bakery called Grables. Here, he rose from a truck driver to a vice president, saving enough money to then start his own bakery. He bought space on 248 Andalusia Ave. in Coral Gables, FL and named it Andalusia Bake Shop after the street. For years, he spent more time in the bakery than at home; he sometimes slept on sacks of flour to sleep. Soon he hired enough employees that he trusted to help run his bakery.
The items Jesse sold were so delicious that people were willing to pay top dollar for them. He once tried to raise the prices to slow the frantic pace, but it didn't work. After a particularly overwhelming Thanksgiving, he decided to stop taking holiday phone orders. One Thanksgiving Andalusia had over 500 orders. Realizing they didn't have a place to put all of this food, they rented two school buses, put brown paper on the windows, scrubbed them down, rented air conditioning units and backed the buses up to the bakery, and labeled the buses A-H and I-Z for last names of the orders.
Business was booming. Along with Jesse's wonderful talent, and successful business, he also had a very generous heart. He kept the neighborhood police and fire stations well supplied. He also donated pastries to any civic group that asked. Once, he even hired a man purely out of needing a job. He didn't have any talent in baking, so he was paid to clean up, like sweep the floors and wash the dishes. One day, when my Uncle Jesse didn't go into the bakery, the man he hired, Orlando Irina-Diaz stabbed the head baker five times with a French Kitchen knife. His name was Ernesto Torres and he was a 57-year old grandfather. He staggered through a crowd of stunned co-workers and costumers, and died on the sidewalk outside of the shop. Jesse was distraught when he found out. Torres was a friend of his as well as an employee of 18 years.
A week later, Andalusia reopened to fill passover and Easter orders, but it wasn't the same. My uncle was so affected by this incident that he decided to sell the business to a CPA named Andy Kaplan for $500,000. He helped with training and encouraged his former employees to remain. He even gave Kaplan recipes, and helped by making the transition quiet and slow so costumers wouldn't notice. However, Kaplan decided to rapidly expand to seven South Florida locations and went bankrupt within a decade.
The business where Andalusia once was is now a Chocolatier. I actually visited the chocolatier, called Chocolate Fashion, for my sixteenth birthday. It is a very nice place, and the people were kind. However, this whole period of time was a sad part of my Uncle Jesse's life. He moved on by retiring to a beautiful home in the Keys in 1988, right on the water. He took to fishing with the same fervor that he brought to baking and began making smoked fish spreads. He also continued baking by making pies for the neighbors, and bringing homemade eggnog to family Christmases.
Jesus Seijas Quesada died of multiple myeloma at Baptist Hospital on August 19, 2010. I was 11-years old, and this was the first death I had experienced. I decided when I was 8 that I wanted to follow in my great uncle's footsteps (in the field of baking), and even more-so once I heard this story. His legend should be continued. He was a kind man with raw talent. Andalusia Bake Shop was known as the Tiffany of baked goods. No birthday party seemed right without his cakes, and no bar mitzvah seemed complete without his braided challahs. He was a kind man with raw talent. His legend deserves to live on.
