When Kendele Noto was 12, her dad would pick her up after schooland bring her to the family business, a bakery in St. Charles.
“I told her, ‘We’re going to pay you a wage, but you’re goinghave to do the work,’ ” Jasper Noto said.
Kendele and her older sister, Courtney, started off with jobslike folding pastry boxes or filling up the cookie pans. Kendelealways wanted to do more, her father said.
“I would ice the cake so that all I had left to do was theborder, and I let her pipe it on,” he said. “Pretty soon she wantedto learn how to do the writing.”
Kendele, now 23, is still behind the counter at J. Noto’s FineItalian Confections, only she’s the one running the kitchen thesedays. She’s the third generation of the Noto family to work in thebakery at 336 South Main Street.
Back when Jasper Noto started the business in 1973, the St.Louis area had dozens of family owned bakeries, but now there areonly about a dozen. So another generation taking over in thebusiness is becoming a rare thing.
Pete Rosciglione, whose family bakery is one of the oldest inthe area — it’s been around since the 1890s — said that the bakerybusiness is not for everybody.
“This is strictly physical, hands-on labor every day, at least12 hours a day,” he said.
Kendele Noto said even she didn’t want to go into the familybusiness at first. After graduating from Duchesne High School, sheattended culinary school at Forest Park Community College andlearned about soups and sauces and butchering.
She got a job at Racquet Club Ladue, where she prepared saladsand worked on the grill. But she was drawn back to the familybusiness.
“I saw what else was out there, and I decided we have a lot ofpotential here,” she said.
Noto said she’s worked hard to balance tradition with a moremodern take on the business. So while she’s preserved the Italiancookie recipes of her great-grandparents from Sicily, she’s starteda website, a Facebook page and a Twitter account.
She’s also kept up with the trends in baking, like cupcakes, andmini-desserts like cake pops. She’s learned to make chocolate andis developing seasonal specialties like a blackberry crumbcheesecake she hopes to debut this spring.
“I take existing recipes that my dad has and change them to gowith more modern styles or what’s new for the season,” she said.”We never have a set menu because we’re constantly changing it andcreating new things.”
She’s also trained with some of the top pastry chefs in thecountry, like Colette Peters of New York.
In December, one of Noto’s designs won top honors at agingerbread house competition at Plaza Frontenac. But her favoritedessert is more traditional — a chocolate covered cannoli withricotta cheese filling.
The popularity of shows on the Food Network and TLC, like “CakeBoss,” are slowly changing the bakery business, she said.
“People are going to spend more money on birthday cakes becausethey want that Cake Boss or Food Network design, and we are open tocreating the new fondant and topsy-turvy cakes that look like theyare falling over,” she said.
The business is still run entirely by family members. Kendele’sgrandmother, Florence Noto, helps in the kitchen, and Courtney Notowaits on customers behind the counter.
“Sometimes we fight with each other, but our family is sotight-knit, I wouldn’t want it any other way,” she said.
Jasper Noto, 60, has turned over the cake baking duties to hisdaughter, and he joked that he’s the one who needs lessons now. Buthe still gets involved with the construction of the cakes and helpshis daughter figure out how to stabilize some of the more unusualdesigns.
“It makes me proud to see what she can do,” he said.
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