The Dixie House rolls maestro

You could say Luciano Gomez knows a thing or two about rolling in the dough. For the past 30 years, he has been the man behind the fresh-baked goodness that arrives in your breadbasket at Dixie House. “Rolling out all the dough is the hardest part. It’s all about how you use your hands to work the dough,” he says. Luciano is a humble man of few words, so he’d never readily admit that he makes the best rolls — but his manager, Mariano Rodriguez, will. “This guy has regulars who come here just for his rolls. And if someone else has made the bread that day, they can tell. I don’t know what he has, but he has a touch that nobody else does.” On average, Luciano uses that magic touch (and the help of an industrial mixer) to turn out about 1,400 rolls and loaves of cornbread per day. And that steady flow of bread keeps the customers coming back. “Sometimes customers will ask for me to come out of the kitchen just so they can tell me how good my bread is,” Gomez says. “It lets me know I’m doing my job and making the customers happy. That’s a beautiful feeling.”