Rising Hopes

There’s a lot more rising in this old Gless Street bakery than the rolls of fresh Italian bread that fill the room with the steamy warmth of hot dough.

At Homeboy Bakery, which has just reopened after years of roller-coaster finances, new hopes are sailing high.

Father Gregory Boyle of Dolores Mission Church and the young men who work in the Boyle Heights business hope for success in their third stab at this unique enterprise, an endeavor that outfits gang members with hairnets and puts them to work baking bread.

Two previous efforts to keep Homeboy Bakery afloat succumbed to heavy competition, but this summer the bakery is back in business with the help of a $160,000 grant from radio station KPWR-FM, “Power 106.”

Homeboy upgraded its bakery with those funds and then worked out a deal to bake 600 Italian, French and sourdough loaves a day for Frisco Baking Co. in Cypress Park.

“I think we’ve finally found a formula that works,” Boyle said.

The bakery is part of Homeboy Industries, a brainchild of Boyle, who fights to create jobs as a way to stem violence.

“You can see guys who used to shoot at each other working together,” Boyle said. “There’s a symbolic value to seeing enemies working side by side.

“You’re sending a signal that what if we worked together, instead of fighting each other? And on a societal level, what if we worked together for full employment, instead of full incarceration?”

The program has been lauded as an innovative way to bring peace and jobs to the community. Vice President Al Gore visited the business in June 1994 and praised the bakery as a successful grass-roots enterprise.

If the bakery’s past closures crushed many spirits, its rebirth is a sign not to give up, Boyle said.

“Sometimes things get hot out on the streets,” Boyle said. “But this place is good to turn to, to hold people together. It’s right in the heart of the community. And it’s bread, which has a holy value to it.”

The novice bakers churning out the hot, golden rolls in the late afternoons agree that they are making more than bread in this small white building.

“It’s cool,” said Kenny Berrios, 22, as he slapped dough down on the wooden table in the middle of the room and gave it an expert twist. “If we didn’t work here, it’d be real hard to find a job. This keeps me out of trouble.”

Berrios and three other young men--members of rival gangs--work together peacefully five days a week for $7 an hour.

“This is a great idea,” said Ron Perata, co-owner of Frisco. “We’re making bread and involved in helping get these kids jobs.”

He laughs. “When they started, they didn’t even know what a ball of dough looked like. Now look at ‘em.”

The young men work rhythmically, loading the dough into a machine that spits out round balls, flattens them into oval loaves and dumps them on a conveyor.

The bakers grab the loaves and, with quick flicks of their wrists, whip them into neat braids and circles.

Perata shows the young apprentice bakers how to clear the dough-shaping machines when uneven loaves get backed up and tangled in the conveyor belt.

“What’s nice about dough,” he tells Berrios as they knead the bread, “is that if it gets messed up in there, you can always reform it and try again.”

Berrios looks up, nodding in agreement. He knows about trying again. For these young men, the bakery provides more than just a job--it’s a new start.

Berrios is on parole for a murder he was involved in 10 years ago. “It’s been real hard to find a job,” he said quietly.

Boyle put him to work helping to renovate the bakery a year ago. After a month of training with Perata and others from Frisco, he now shapes loaves with the ease of a seasoned baker.

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The job, he said, has given him a real boost of self-confidence. “Father Greg gave me a key the first day I was here,” he said proudly.

Now he plans to go back to school and become a paramedic.

Berrios works side by side with Roman Gonzalez, 26, a member of a rival gang.

Together, they load metal racks with hot pans and carry piles of dough across the red tile floor, leaving tracks in the light dusting of flour on the ground.

“Instead of looking at each other as rivals, we look at each other as another worker,” Berrios said.

“It’s cool,” Gonzalez added. “You leave it outside.”

In the next few months, Perata wants to increase production to 1,500 loaves a day with the help of several more bakers. Eventually, as many as 30 bakers could be employed once Homeboy moves to 24-hour production.

After this job, Perata said, these young bakers have the credentials to get hired at any major bakery.

Gonzalez isn’t sure if he wants to pursue baking as a career, but for now, it’s a job that gives him steady work and a sense of purpose.

“They need more programs like this.” he said. “It’s something to get up for in the morning. You don’t have to think about just hanging with your friends all day. That gets old as you get old. If it wasn’t for this, I wouldn’t have anything to do.”