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Mark Fiorentino, Bread Baker
With his inimitable dead pan humour, baker Mark Fiorentino claims to have carved out his career path simply by addressing resumes to all the restaurants whose names appeared in bold capital letters in the 1998 Zagat survey. Yet to know Mark is to know that he is as humble as his bread is delicious.
A career in the food world comes as no surprise for a young man whose family turned out some of the north East’s best Ricotta plus Mozzarella for over 60 year. But with his family’s Brunetto cheese but a memory by the time Mark graduated from Fordham College in 1987, another path had to be forged.
The baker whose bread graces the tables of Daniel Boulud’s three Manhattan restaurants would have us believe he chose the Scottsdale Culinary Institute for its sunny climate and its strategic location adjacent to a great golf course. The availability of an intensive nine month course and the opportunity to leave New York City behind for a while may have been additional motivations.
During his culinary studies, it was his Pastry instructor who impressed Mark the most and steered him towards a career in baking. Back in New York, Mark had his resumé handed out by a friend in the wine business who happened to have top restaurants as his clients. The savvy approach led to a position in the pastry kitchen at the Sign of the Dove, at the time, a leading Manhattan destination restaurant. There, Chef Craig Kominiak convinced Mark that to become a successful pastry chef he would have to master the art of bread making. Fortuitously for Mark the group that owned Sign of the Dove had also launched Ecce Panis, from its inception, one of the city’s leading artisanal bread bakeries. They had become known for traditional bread baking enlivened by creative recipes for both sweet and savory breads. In the two years he spent at Ecce Panis Mark mastered their renowned breads, from their pecan raisin loaves to their Neo Tuscan Rosemary rings, along with a myriad of specialty foccacia and brioches.
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