Dom Castellitto – Salt Yeast Flour & Water
Dom Castellitto became a baker because he fell in love with Florinda Policastro. Her father, Leopoldo Policastro, owned Marie’s Bakery in Hoboken, and after Dom saw her outside her school, he says, “I made myself a home in the bakery there.” He had been working as a plumber, but soon learned the baker’s arts. Dom, and the man who would become his father-in-law, were both born in small towns near Naples, Italy, and every day they offered rustic round loaves and short “French” breads to local families, restaurants, and delis—breads that had been baked in ovens built by their countrymen around the turn of the last century.
In the early 1980s, Dom set off on his own, to start the Grand Street bakery that bears his name. Over the years, the other coal-fired brick oven bakeries in the city closed: the last to go were Marie’s, which closed for good, and Antique, which transplanted its baking operation to Jersey City. Dom’s Bakery is now the last operating brick oven bakery in the city.