A short history of one small bakery on South Tenth Street, told the way the Olsens tell it themselves.
Anton Holzapfel was twenty-three when he stepped off the train at the old Webster Street depot in 1909. He had been a baker’s apprentice in Hungary for six years; he had a hundred and forty dollars in a leather pouch sewn into his coat lining, and a recipe for kolache dough that his mother had given him written on the back of a holy card.
He worked for three years at a German bakery on Sixteenth Street while he saved. In 1912 he bought a long, narrow storefront at 1708 South Tenth — the same address we’re at today — for nine hundred dollars and a promise to repaint the front. He opened on a Tuesday in April with one apprentice, four kinds of bread, and a small case of kolaches.
The Saturday rye brought half of Little Bohemia to his door. He was famous for two things: that loaf, and a willingness to feed anyone who didn’t have a nickel.
Anton’s daughter Maria was born in 1918 in the apartment above the shop. She started working the counter at twelve, started baking the kolaches at sixteen, and ran the shop while her father was sick during the worst part of the Depression. In 1948, after Anton passed, Maria married a Norwegian baker named Henrik Olsen who had been working at the shop for two years. The sign came down in 1967 — they kept the recipes, they kept the address, they kept the hours, and they put the new family’s name on the front in gold leaf, where it has stayed.
Maria and Henrik’s son Louis took over in 1981. He added the apple fritter and the cinnamon roll, and not much else. His son — Mike — runs it now, with his teenage daughter Kayla showing up Saturday mornings to learn the kolache fold. Anton would be eighty-six years dead by next spring. The dough recipe Mike uses is the same one written on the back of the holy card.
We open at 7:30 in the morning, Tuesday through Saturday. We bake until we sell out. The kolaches still come out the way they came out in 1912 — a little uneven on top, the apricot a little tart, the dough a little sweeter than you’d expect. Some things shouldn’t be improved on.
Buys the storefront at 1708 South Tenth for $900. Opens with one apprentice and a kolache dough recipe his mother wrote on a holy card.
Marries Henrik Olsen, a Norwegian baker who’d been working at the shop for two years. The sign stays Holzapfel until Anton passes.
Anton dies in late 1966. The new sign goes up over the door in spring 1967 — gold leaf, same address, new family name.
Maria’s son takes over. Adds the apple fritter and the cinnamon roll. Refuses to change anything else.
Fourth generation. Same flour supplier as 1948. Same opening time as 1912. His daughter Kayla now folds kolaches on Saturday mornings.
114 years on Tenth Street. Tuesday through Saturday, 7:30 AM until sold out. Cash preferred. Anton’s holy card hangs framed by the register.