This happened sometime after September of 1973 and before December of 1978. I was a teacher at Forney High, unmarried, and on the way to a University of Texas football game in Austin. We had left from the Church parking lot right after meeting there at the end of the Friday school day.
Ben and Jim were friends from Hope Lutheran Church in Dallas and around thirty years old. One had never married, and one was divorced. Both travelled a fair amount, had dined out at quite a few different places, and liked UT and OSU football.
Oh, yes, they had a cousin-in-law in Austin, and she periodically invited them to “house-sit” her multi-story house in Austin while she and her husband (their cousin) travelled on weekends or holidays.
The three of us were going to the “big house” and had a grand time planned for 6th Street, the UT vs. somebody game, and visiting historic places—such as Scholz Garten, a standard and stand-out 150 years-old dining and drinking place near downtown Austin.
So, about halfway to Waco, which is halfway to Austin, the HEADLINE was spoken! I was incredulous! Who would drive all the way to the West Texas area out in “nowhere” to pick up breakfast for the next morning? And these two guys were educators, just as was I. What had I gotten myself into—going on a trip with two “crazy” brothers!
I was in the back seat and decided to take a nap on the way to West Texas, since I had stayed up most of the night before, grading papers and painting my house on Pacific Avenue in Forney.
About an hour after I had dozed off, Ben was shaking me and telling me to “wake up,” because we were at the “Kolache Place.” I knew that could not be true, because it was still light, and we could not have driven that far!
The two of them decided that Ben, the more dominant of the twins, would just go in and buy a nice selection of “whatever it was that they were buying for the next day”—and they were so excited about something called KOLACHES! I had never heard of them, and I looked out the window and saw a sign that said “VILLAGE BAKERY” and another sign back across the railroad tracks that said CITY of WEST.
Ben stayed in the shop for a long time, and Jim said he was probably sampling several and not going to tell us! When he came out, he said, “I have three dozen, two are mixed and one breakfast meat!”
I said, “O. K., so what are kolaches?”
The “brothers” agreed to “let’s all eat one of the breakfast kolaches so that Don can know what they are.”
We did, and then agreed to eat just one more each, and then one more each, and finally one more each— and they were gone! Oh, they were heavenly!
O. K. We ate all of the other two dozen before we made it to the destination, about two hours away, and we postponed our eating out until the next morning, but we did not have kolaches then; we had country breakfasts at “Uncle Van’s Pancake House,” I think!
So, what are KOLACHES? The ones I am talking about have a CZECH background, and they are really pronounced as follows: ko—LAH—tch (according to Lisa Compton) (Sylvia Miller’s older daughter) and several Czech and German cooks I have asked through the years! They emphasize that there is no—EE—sound at the end!
However, Ben and Jim taught me to say KO— LAH—CHEES, and that has stayed with me!
And, there is a pretty long recipe, but all I know is that there are sugar and flour and yeast and melted butter and various fillings and toppings—and then there is eating and eating until “you swear never to eat another one,” and that lasts until the next time you pass a “kolache shop,” and you “decide to just eat one and save the rest for breakfast,” since you drove all the way to West Texas to buy them!
Actually, the Texas definition is usually “a breakfast sweet bread filled with various breakfast items and originally brought to America by Czech immigrants. They can contain fruits, brisket, sausage, eggs, cheese, etc.” These are what we first ate on our way to Austin, and they were in the middles of the traditional sweet bread rolls and not klobasneks that are more like “pigs-in-blankets” or “breakfast tacos.”
However, true KOLACHES, according to the experts I trust, are not meat but sweet breads filled with purees, such as apricot, cheese, cherry, prune, peach, pineapple, apple, plum, blueberry, and other sweet fruits. And there are toppings, such as streusel (Posypka) or cheese sprinkles or cinnamon.
My favorite is cherry and cream cheese or cottage cheese or just plain blueberry. My buddy, Henry Sollers, always liked to get a dozen “prune-filled” ones to take back to his Forney home after U. I. L. Academic meets in Czech towns! Once, we stopped to buy some out of the back of a pick-up truck in the Trinity River Bottoms close to Ferris/Seagoville!
I will close this article and start driving west after I tell you a few places in Texas to purchase “good ones.” ‘Czech Stop’ in West; ‘Old Main Street Bakery’ in Rosenberg; ‘Village Bakery’ in West; ‘Kolache Haven’ in Denton; ‘Hill Country Donuts’ in Fredericksburg; ‘Little Czech Bakery’ in West; ‘The Kolache Shop’ in Clute; ‘Kolache Depot Bakery’ in Ennis; ‘Rumpy’s’ in Gainesville
Arrive at any of the bakeries early in the morning when the kolaches are just coming out of the ovens and eat them right there in the store while they can still just about burn your tongue! Oh, my! You might have to spend the night right there if you eat too many!
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