For Brenda Sabbag ’83, running her bakery and café has come naturally.
This is a story about family.
It starts in the wee hours of the morning with college student Mikey, white T-shirt stained from kneading and shaping bread, loading loaves into a blazing hot Italian oven. The dough has undergone a slow proof overnight to allow for a longer fermentation, during which the yeast consumes sugar, producing alcohol that cooks off during baking. That process will give each boule a more delectable flavor and aroma.
Later, his high school–aged brother, Joey, stops in to help churn out more sourdough, the bestselling bread. Alongside them is Daryl, who effectively came with the bakery when the boys’ mother, Brenda Sabbag ’83, bought it 17 years ago.
When Sabbag started Provencal Bakery and Cafe in Middletown, R.I., she set out to run a successful business to support her children after spending years in the printing industry. Little did she know she’d create a community — more like a family — around the food produced there. Sabbag has no formal training in baking or cooking but, she says, “I like it, I’m good at it.”
By the way: This is also a story about good food. The Provencal staff makes a lot of it. The items on the menu read like pages in a recipe book, passed down through generations. Sandwiches are named after important people in Sabbag’s life. “People invent them and then the name sticks,” she says. For example, the Mary Lou, composed of brie, apple, honey mustard, and fresh turkey, is named after her mother. There’s also a traditional Newport mocha cake, which is a well-kept secret recipe that’s made for Provencal by the building’s former owner, a fifth-generation baker. “It’s extremely hard to make,” she says. “People try to make it and they fail.”
Sabbag also relies on the Generation Z members of her team to give her more modern ideas, like the recent addition of bubble tea. “The young kids, they’re like, ‘Why don’t we try this?’ That got me into [modern times],” she laughs. She also leans on them to market her business on social media: After employee Breyanna quickly cores moist chocolate cupcakes and fills them with a fluffy buttercream filling, she snaps a few photos for Instagram.
Rewind to 2005, when Sabbag and her then-husband bought the bread bakery, which is a separate location from the cafe. At the time, she did printing sales for small business owners, and she undertook marketing for the bakery on the side. She opened the cafe in 2010 after getting an itch for making treats like lemon squares and chocolate cake. In 2011, she left the printing business and pursued the bakery and cafe full time. Newly divorced with two small children, it was no easy feat. “I took a business that was in rough shape and did six, seven farmer’s markets a week — anything to get our name out there,” she remembers.
Her work paid off. Provencal produces 3,000 loaves of bread per week, made by hand; fresh baguettes, asiago bacon loaves, and pain de campagne, among other breads, are sold wholesale around Rhode Island and Massachusetts. People are starting to take notice: Sabbag and co. were recently featured on an episode of The Great Food Truck Race, hosted by Food Network chef Tyler Florence.
Sabbag took a leap of faith by buying her bakery all those years ago. But, if you were to peek into the window of her Colgate rental on West Kendrick Avenue in 1982, her success might seem a little more predictable.
Late at night, Sabbag would stay up kneading bread or baking lasagna from scratch for her roommates. One such roommate told her recently, “This was fate.”
