Dortoni Bakery opens in Huntington Station 

With the April opening of Dortoni Bakery in Huntington Station, the Messina family operates five Long Island bakeries, and a fifth generation of bakers is stepping up to ensure their legacy.

Corey Messina, who manages all the locations, will regularly encounter his children — Christian, 16, Valentina, 16, Gabriella, 13 and even Luciana, 8 — working at the newest store. His brother Daniele, who oversees the main production kitchen in Levittown, has one child still at home but, like her cousins, Angelica, 16, helps out both in the kitchen and at the counter in Huntington Station and in East Norwich.

Dortoni’s repertoire covers pretty much all the confectionery bases, from classic American cakes, fruit pies, cupcakes and cookies to the bite-sized dessert shooters and cake pops that, Messina said, “the kids like.” Over the last decade, he has noticed a shift from traditional frosted cakes to naked-sided tortes, whose layers of cake alternate with flavored mousses for desserts that are “lower, but airier — and more elegant looking.” Popular tortes here include dulce de leche, mango, raspberry charlotte and the bestselling “silk and satin,” comprising cheesecake and chocolate mousse finished with chocolate ganache.

Almost every day, Messina plucks a few quaresimali out of the display case and enjoys the decidedly unglamorous-looking, nut-filled biscotti with an espresso. The Dortoni items that are closest to his heart are the ones that came from Italy with his father, Lello Messina, whose own father and grandfather operated bakeries in Naples. “When my father opened Levittown, he used his father’s recipes for the quaresimali, the S cookies, the fig cookies, the cassata, the sfogliatelle, the lobster tails — and we use those recipes today.”

After he opened Levittown in 1976, Lello bought a bakery, La Bonne Boulangerie in Port Jefferson, and then opened a second Bonne Boulangerie in East Norwich. By the time he opened Messina Market (2003) and Red Tomato Pizza (2013) in East Norwich, his sons Corey and Daniele were helping to run the business. In 2019 the family took over the Torta Fina bakery in Commack.

Now, Lello leaves most of the day-to-day to his sons, and their mission is to consolidate and focus. They sold the market and the pizzeria, rebranded both Bonne Boulangeries as “Dortoni” and gave all the bakeries the same sleek, modern design. Customer preferences are always shifting and the business is adjusting to a decreased demand for highly decorated fondant cakes. (Fondant is an edible — though not terribly tasty — paste that is rolled out and draped over cakes to give them a smooth finish that can be manipulated like clay.)

“People have less disposable income these days,” Messina said, “and one of these Louis Vuitton pocketbook cakes can cost almost as much as the actual. On TV, they make these things in a matter of minutes but it can take a chef 10 hours.”

Dortoni has a thriving wedding-cake business — with contracts with about 30 catering venues — but even brides and grooms are requesting less fondant, more buttercream. “The trend is for more vintage cakes,” he observed. “Homey is coming back.”

Dortoni Bakery, 7 E. Jericho Tpke., Huntington Station, 631-313-2253, dortonibakery.com. Open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day.