Unclean hands and unclean equipment at a Miami Latin American Bakery, inspectors say

Filthy hands and equipment covered the state inspection of a longtime West Miami bakery connected to a restaurant.

When Florida Department of Agriculture inspectors Guisella Uribe and Margaret Alvarez dropped by Latin American Bakery & Cafe, 890 SW 57th Ave., they found the bakery so wanting that the inspection resulted in “Re-Inspection Required,” the worst overall result.

Unlike restaurants inspected by a different Florida department, bakeries, grocers, packaged food sellers and other establishments inspected by the Ag Department don’t have to close after a failed inspection. But inspectors can slap Stop-Use Orders on areas and equipment and Stop Sales on food.

One of those was used Wednesday at Latin American Bakery. Here are some of the violations found by the inspectors:

▪ Food-handling employees in the kitchen, bakery and food service areas “did not wash hands between entering and exiting food preparation area, handling unclean utensils and returning to handle food items.”

▪ That’s especially a problem because the inspectors saw a kitchen food-handling employee “touching ready-to-eat ham croquettes with bare hands...”

▪ A kitchen food-handling employee was “wearing single-use gloves entering and exiting the food preparation area, handling unclean equipment/utensils then handling clean utensils to serve food to customers without changing gloves.”

▪ The bakery handwash sink didn’t have soap or paper towels. It did have the bread cart in front of the handwash sink. Even if you can reach over something to wash your hands (and it didn’t have food items on it), anything in front of the handwash sink counts as an obstruction and is a violation.

▪ The bakery workers “washed and rinsed food utensils and did not sanitize before let the containers dry.”

▪ The bakery food preparation equipment had “old food residue encrusted on the deli slicer and guard and on the attachment joint of the mixers.”

▪ In the food service area, inspectors found a common violation for Miami-Dade and southern Broward County. The coffee machine steam wand used for milk had been in use for more than four hours, but hadn’t been washed, rinsed and sanitized.

▪ In the kitchen, “Large amounts of grease deposits, liquid food residue, and dried food residue were encrusted on the underside of the preparation tables and legs, on the sides of the stove, fryer units, and on all equipment found throughout the kitchen area.”

▪ Kitchen and bakery “pots and trays were encrusted with grease deposits.”

▪ “Dirt, dust and old food residue accumulated on the ceiling tiles above food equipment” in the kitchen, bakery and backroom.

▪ The kitchen had a “heavy accumulation of grease on the vent hood above the cookline.”

▪ The hot storage unit in the food service area should be able to keep food at 135 degrees or above. But the cold facts were that this hot storage unit malfunctioned badly, resulting in beef empanadas, chicken empanadas and spinach empanadas, beef stuffed potatoes, and ham an cheese mini sandwiches measuring under 100 degrees after an hour of storage. The inspectors allowed the food to be reheated and slapped a Stop-Use Order on the unit.

▪ Food all over the place measured dangerously out of temperature. A carton of eggs on a prep table that should have been below 41 degrees came in at 76. On another prep table, ham was at 73, cheese at 74 and sausage at 74. Because the foods hadn’t been out for long, less than 30 minutes, they were allowed to be put back into refrigeration until properly cooled.

▪ The place lacked a probe thermometer to check food temperatures, a basic piece of food safety equipment that any retail food establishment should have in multiples.

▪ In the bakery, chlorine sanitizer in a bucket that needed to be at 50 to 100 parts per million measured 200 ppm.

▪ “Food employees not wearing a hair restraint while engaged in open food handling” in the kitchen, bakery and food service areas.

▪ “No designated person in charge was present at the food establishment during operating hours, until the owner arrived through the inspection.”

Stop Sale Orders: None.

Stop Use Orders: A hot holding unit that wasn’t keeping food warm enough.