Pied Piper : Baker Gregory Spann Is Promoting a Pastry With a Sweet Difference

When people wax eloquent about the gustatory glories of one brand or another of pumpkin pie, Gregory Spann thinks it’s just because they have never had a chance to sample the product his company has been turning out for the past half a century.

But he doesn’t make pumpkin pies.

And doesn’t want to.

Since its founding 56 years ago by master baker Harry L. Patterson, the company known as the 27th Street Bakery has had but one specialty--one claim to fame unmatched and unrivaled and also practically unknown outside a small but select community.

The firm in the 2700 block of South Central Avenue is Southern California’s largest maker of sweet potato pie.

“Pumpkin’s OK,” said Spann, co-owner of the firm and grandson of the founder. “But sweet potato pie is something else again. You make that with Southern California sun.”

Spann, who learned the business from his grandparents, beginning with a thorough grounding in the grading and purchasing of yams and sweet potatoes for the amount, texture and

sweetness that each kind can be expected to yield, said he has tried imported varieties from time to time.

“The ones from Georgia are good,” he said, “and so are those from Louisiana and some other places. But the best are from right here in California.

“The ones I like best are the kind grown over near Santa Ana.

“They’re what I mean about sunshine; so golden and luscious when they’re baked that the sun is a part of them.”

Frequently mistaken for pumpkin pie by the uninitiated, sweet potato pie is easily distinguished, Spann said, by its more creamy texture and more compelling flavor.

“It’s what pumpkin pie tries to be, but isn’t,” he said.

Each day the bakery turns out about 190 pies, mostly in a five-inch size sold through fried chicken and other specialty restaurants and in convenience markets in South-Central Los Angeles, but Spann hopes to branch out, at first just in Southern California and then nationally.

“All I need,” he said, “is a few people who think they like pumpkin pie . . . and a chance to let them taste one made with sweet potatoes.”