There are kitchens you grow up in, and then there are kitchens that grow up in you.
Long before Pan D Bono Bakery opened its doors at 704 Broadway in Pawtucket, the story of this family started inside another bakery — one in Colombia, where the founder’s father woke before sunrise every day for almost his entire life. He worked the dough, fired the ovens, and raised seven children alongside the smell of fresh bread. He and his four brothers and two sisters were, quite literally, born inside a bakery.
That childhood is the reason this bakery exists today. And the reason every loaf, every pandebono, every cup of tinto served at Pan D Bono Bakery carries something more than just flavor — it carries a name, a memory, and a quiet thank-you to the man who started it all.
“The kitchen never closed. Not for weddings, not for funerals, not even for Christmas morning. There was always bread to bake, and people who needed it.” |
A father who lived his whole life in a bakery
In rural Colombia, a baker is more than someone who makes bread. A baker is the first person awake in town. The smell of his oven is what wakes the neighborhood. His shop is where the schoolchildren stop on the way to class, where the farmers stop on the way back from the fields, and where the abuelas come on Sunday morning to argue, laugh, and trade gossip over coffee.
That was the world the founder’s father lived in. He didn’t just bake for a living. He baked because it was the only way he knew to feed seven children, anchor a community, and put something honest into the world before the sun came up.
It was hard work. The kind of work that wears a person down slowly and then builds them back up, stronger, every morning. The kind of work that can’t be faked or shortcut, because the dough always knows.
Seven siblings, one bakery, one childhood
There were seven of them — four brothers and two sisters and the founder himself. They grew up tripping over flour sacks. They learned to count with eggs. They fell asleep to the sound of the oven door swinging shut and woke up to the smell of the next batch already rising.
By the time they were old enough to read, they all knew the rhythm of a bakery: mix at four, shape at five, bake at six, sell out by ten, start the afternoon batch by noon. They didn’t need to be taught — they absorbed it the way kids absorb a language nobody bothers to explain because it’s just always there.
As they grew up, life took them in different directions. Some of the siblings stayed close to baking; others went into other trades, other cities, other countries. But every one of them carried the same thing out of that kitchen: a respect for what early mornings can build, and a knowledge that bread, made well, is one of the most generous things a person can give to another.
From Colombia to Rhode Island — 25 years of building a life
The founder came to Rhode Island twenty-five years ago. Like a lot of immigrants from Colombia who landed in this corner of New England, the path here ran through the textile mills, the factories of the Blackstone Valley, and the long trail of family and friends already settled in places like Central Falls, Pawtucket, and Cumberland.
Rhode Island was not Colombia. The winters were colder. The Spanish was different — Dominican, Puerto Rican, Guatemalan, Mexican — a wider Latin American chorus than the Paisa accent of home. But the work was honest, the community was here, and the kids could go to good schools.
For most of those twenty-five years, the bakery stayed a dream and not a plan. Life had other priorities — raising a family, building a home, learning a new country. The dough waited. The recipes waited. The father’s voice in the back of his son’s head, the one that said son, one day, you’ll have your own bakery — that waited too.
“I told my father when I was a boy: when I’m grown, I’ll have my own bakery. He just smiled. He never doubted it. He just waited to see when.” |
Why a bakery, and why now
After twenty-five years of waiting, the bakery finally felt like the right thing at the right time. The kids were grown. The neighborhood was hungry — not just for bread, but for a piece of home. And the city of Pawtucket was full of Colombians, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and a new generation of food-curious neighbors who had never tasted a real pandebono and didn’t even know what they were missing.
Opening Pan D Bono Bakery wasn’t just about starting a business. It was about closing a circle that began in a small Colombian bakery half a century ago, with a father who never stopped working, and seven children who were born among the loaves.
Every morning at the bakery starts the same way it did back then. The lights come on early. The dough goes into the mixer before most of the city is awake. By the time the first customer pushes the door open, the smell is already on Broadway — and somewhere, in the way these things happen, the founder’s father is there too.
What “Pan D Bono” means to our family
Pandebono — pronounced pan-deh-BO-no — is the most famous cheese bread in Colombia. It’s made from cassava starch, precooked corn flour, fresh cheese, and egg, and when it comes out of the oven hot, it has a slightly crisp shell, a soft and chewy interior, and a flavor that is impossibly cheesy in the best way. It is naturally gluten-free. It is the perfect partner for a cup of Colombian coffee or a steaming mug of hot chocolate.
Naming the bakery after this single piece of bread was not an accident. Pandebono is more than a product. It is a daily ritual in Colombian homes. It is the smell of breakfast. It is what your grandmother hands you when you walk in the door. It is the bread that anchored the founder’s family in their small Colombian kitchen, and it is the bread that anchors this family bakery in Pawtucket today.
If you have never had one — really had one, fresh, while it’s still warm — there is a small adventure waiting for you on Broadway.
Come visit us at 704 Broadway
Pan D Bono Bakery is at 704 Broadway, Pawtucket, Rhode Island. We’re a short drive from anywhere in the Blackstone Valley, just minutes from Central Falls, Cumberland, and Lincoln, and an easy detour from downtown Providence. You can call us at (401) 475-0552.
Come in for a fresh pandebono. Try a buñuelo. Order a tinto and stand at the counter for a minute and let the smell do its work. We’ll be here, doing the same thing the founder’s father did every morning of his life — baking honest bread, for real people, in a community that feels like home.
Welcome to Pan D Bono Bakery. From our family to yours.
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704 Broadway, Pawtucket, RI · (401) 475-0552
Your lamb satay skewers recipe is hands down our house favorite!