Posted by Michael Stern on April 17, 2009
If you’ve eaten around the heart of Texas – or were raised by a Czech baker – you likely know about kolaches, the uber-Danish that was brought to the Lone Star State by central European immigrants and is now THE popular morning pastry. We’ve yet to have a really bad one, but if you want to have it at its source, the place to go is the town of West, just off I-35 north of Waco.
"Kolace [Czech spelling] are sold warm from the oven," assures the movable-letter menu above the counter at the Village Bakery, a shop with three small tables and one circular ten-seat seminar table that hosts an ad hoc community coffee klatch throughout most mornings. The coffee drinkers gasped as if they were watching fireworks when we sat at their table, pulled a kolache apart, and a cloud of steam puffed upwards. They had directed us to try apricot and prune, intriguing dour fillings that proved to be scarcely as sweet as the dough itself. They're the flavors favored by old-timers, as are poppy seed and cottage cheese. The coffee drinkers told us that tourists tend to like fruitier versions – apple, strawberry, blueberry – as well as those made with cream cheese.
Fruit and cheese kolaches are Old World standards; the Village Bakery added a Tex-American turn to tradition in the early 1950s when baker Wendell Montgomery, worrying that his big loaves of sausage bread weren't selling well, asked his mother-in-law to come up with a snack-sized version that included the sausage links that are another passion of Eastern Europeans who settled the heart of Texas. Her creation was a gloss on Czech klobasniki, which are customarily made with ground sausage. Purists still refer to them as that or, possibly, as pigs in blankets, reserving the term kolache for those filled with fruit, cheese, or poppy seeds. Savory klobasnikis have become a staple of kolache bakeries throughout the state. The Village Bakery makes regular and hot sausage versions, the latter marked by two slits in the top of the bun, and you'll find bakeries that add cheese and jalapeno peppers and even sauerkraut, too.
Overall: Worth planning a day around
6 out of 6 people found the review helpful. Was it helpful to you?
Reviewers "Must Eats" List
Kolache
($1.00)
Cinnamon Roll
($1.00)
"A selection of kolaches from the Village bakery. The front-row is a trio of klobasniki, which are filled with savory sausage rather than sweet preserves."
Michael Stern
"An elegant alternative to the kolache, Village Bakery's light, fresh cinnamon roll is especially good with coffee."
Michael Stern
"Experienced Roadfooders recognize this sight as a sure sign of a worthy place to eat: the big communal table where townsfolk gather in the morning to have coffee and share news and gossip and, in this case, to eat dozens of kolaches."
Michael Stern
"For over half a century, the Village Bakery has been supplying the people of West, Texas, with good breads, pies, and kolaches. For anyone traveling along I-35 north of Waco, it's an easy-access culinary landmark."
Michael Stern
