Here in Phoenix, great Italian pastries are scarce. If you look, you can find passable cannoli, solid sfogliatelle. But fantastic? The kind of light, flaky, orange-perfumed sweet eaten in the morning that periodically thunders back into mind for the rest of the day? Good luck. This January, The Maggiore Group hopes to change that.

That's when The Sicilian Baker will open next to the first location of The Sicilian Butcher on Tatum Boulevard and Greenway Road. The bakery will produce Sicilian-style sweets (pastry and desserts). It will be overseen by Joey Maggiore, chef and chief catalyst of his family’s rapidly snowballing hospitality conglomerate, The Maggiore Group. The Maggiores have roots in Sicily and return often.