Weikel's Store and Bakery

Posted By Michael Stern on October 29, 2009 7:54 AM

Weikel’s is a good candidate for the least-likely place to find exemplary Roadfood. It is a convenience store attached to a gas station, and at first glance when you walk in, it looks like any other quick-shop highway mart: lots of soda, candy, pre-fab sandwiches, and sundries for sale.

But stroll to the left and there is the bakery case. Actually, several bakery cases. And in these cases are some spectacular pastries, made on the premises by expert bakers. Here you find cinnamon rolls, strudel, cream cheese pound cake, pecan sandies, and cookies of all kinds, plus a repertoire of a dozen kolaches. The kolache is Weikel’s specialty, the shop’s motto (on the highway billboard): We got’cha Kolache.

Kolaches, a Czech-ancestored little pastry that is like a Danish, but with softer, sweeter dough and with better blobs of filling in the center, first got popular in the Texas Hill Country, but now are found throughout much of Texas. There are countless variations, but if you are a first-timer, we recommend the Old World classic -- poppy seed. Other traditional varieties include prune, apricot, and cream cheese.

Weikel's has more good-looking cakes and pastries on the shelf than we ever have had appetite to sample, but we must recommend one more specialty of the house: Weikel’s pig-in-a-blanket. It is a taut-skinned, rugged-textured kielbasa sausage fully encased in a tube of tender-crumb bread that is finer than any hot dog bun we’ve ever eaten.

Overall Rating

kolache

pound cake

pig-in-blanket

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Posted By jawick on July 26, 2011 1:35 AM

To say I was disappointed by the misleading comments I’ve come across regarding Weikel’s Store and Bakery would be an understatement. I drove hours out of my way to sample what others (must be city folk) marvel at. Obviously, they did not have Czech grandmothers to make them mouth-watering kolaches and dill pickles (without sugar) as they grew up.

Go to B-Jo’s Czech Bakery at Prasek’s Hillje Smokehouse south of El Campo if you want to get as close to the real thing as possible (much of the meat at Weikel’s is from Prasek’s Hillje Smokehouse).

I can’t believe that I spent so much money on substandard kolaches ($1 a pop) and dill pickles (almost $8 for not even a quart) that used sugar (yet did not include this ingredient on the label) as I went way off my beaten track to satisfy a desire to relive a wonderful part of my youth. Luckily, I do get to go by B-Jo’s Czech Bakery at Prasek’s Hillje Smokehouse every now and again and am able to get awfully close to those great Czech foods my grandmother used to make with lots of love and elbow grease.

However, I would be remiss if I didn’t say that Weikel’s does make a pretty good raisin cinnamon roll, but it was nowhere good enough for me to get over the poor kolaches and “sugar” dill pickles.

Overall Rating

raisin cinnamon roll

kolache

dill pickles

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Posted By Pete Sommers on March 16, 2007 10:53 PM

Having abandoned my favorite kolache joint between Houston and Bastrop, Hruska's in Ellinger on Hwy 71, because of excessive pride (read: soaring costs), I was greatly and pleasantly surprised to “discover” this well-known gem. I had passed the place numerous times while in or passing through LaGrange (no, I didn’t go there for “that”), but I always found a reason not to stop. Well, never again!

We stopped at Weikel's on the way to Warrenton, and although it was closer to lunch than breakfast, the kolaches were still deliciously warm. What was most impressive is that you don't need to bite into the filling to find fulfillment, as the "crust" by itself is so sweet and tasty.

The down side of the visit is that my girlfriend wouldn’t let me buy more (fighting the ol’ waistline, y’know). Their pies looked almost too good to eat – almost.

LaGrange is not really a place that’s “a little out of the way” from other major highways in the area. But, if you are on your way from Houston to Austin via Columbus, I highly recommend you give this place a try. You will thank me for it. Your waistline may not!

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