Bakeries can be wonderfully delicious places.

I love the smell when you walk in.

Yeah, sometimes I never make it home before I open the bag.

Everybody needs to have fresh bread.

It looks fantastic.

How do you walk by and not come in?

You've got to be good to make a good bakery.

You can't cut any steps.

You want it nice and golden.

Don't want to burn anything.

Bakeries never change that much.

A loaf of bread is a loaf of bread.

There seem to be no rules about what exactly you have to make in order to call yourself a bakery.

I bake a lot, but I can't make anything that beats this place.

It helps to have an oven or two.

I'll leave it in there just for a minute.

You just have to bake something good to eat.

You can buy something at the grocery store, but it's not going to be the same quality as You know what you can get from a bakery like this.

And when you come to a bakery, something like this, where it still has the old fashioned touch to it.

I think it brings happiness to people.

It gives you that sense of just being back.

Back in the day.

I guess you could say.

Everybody likes the chit chat.

When I see a bakery, I usually stop in and see what they have.

So we've traveled across America from Aquinnah to Alaska.

We found some excellent small bakeries that we want to celebrate.

A bakery is a must, among the Hispanic Community.

I think a bakery makes a neighborhood.

I think it draws people.

And draws people together.

I think it's fun.

Like working and talking to people.

Are you doing what I make at the end of the day?

You can see.

Oh, I made all this bread, and it makes people happy.

It's impossible to say that these are the best bakeries in America.

There are too many.

And we apologize if we didn't find your favorite.

We know there were many more neighborhood shops making perfect pastries and beautiful breads.

We're going to visit just a few great bakeries.

While they're not great, if you want to lose weight, but they're a great thing if you like to eat.

They're the kind of businesses that people end up loving Well they dont love me.

They love this place.

That's for sure.

A few great bakeries was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

Okay, let's start in Syracuse, New York, at 502 Pearl Street, where people have been making good bread for a long time at Columbus Baking Company.

Basically, it's one of a kind now.

There's not too many more, I don't know, going on in the country, in the state.

But right now this is how we've done it for since time began.

That's Jimmy Retzos.

He owns and runs this place.

His son Jimmy works here too.

Everyone calls him Junior.

well, we've been here forever.

People come in and say they came here when they were.

Their grandfathers took them in here 60 years ago, and it's still coming in here.

So I come here at least once a week.

And I've known this place since 25 years ago.

It's always been great bread.

It's always been a good place to come and get some italian bread.

You come in, you can overlook the whole place.

And you see the ovens.

You see the the wooden trays where they proof the bread.

And when we opened up, 1895, it was.

Everything was in this one room.

Our day starts at 3 a.m.. I come in and I create a dough.

It's a very simple recipe.

It's water, flour, yeast and salt.

It's very basic.

And, no preservatives, No, no, shortening or eggs or anything like that.

That's why within 24 hours, the bread gets stale.

And then the the other crew, my son and, Philippe, they come in at five, we start and we start working it What we do, We dump it in a double trough and we cover it up, and it sleeps for about an hour and 15 to an hour and a half, and it's to ferment, the dough, to let it raise, to cure, to get that unique taste that we're known for.

Then what we do, we take it out and we put it on a big dough bench, and we'll cut it up into 20oz.

A pound and a quarter well weigh it up, and then we'll roll it up.

And then we put it in, 20, in a box.

And then we stack the boxes, one on top of each other and till the doughs the entire doughs cut and anywhere from 140 loaves to 340 loaves.

And then we'll wait.

Let it raise again for the second time before we start to mold it.

Shape it.

They make four different shapes of bread from the same basic dough.

We're going to give them a personality first shape we're doing right now.

Is this just the high round?

It's just a round a dome drum basically just mat it down and and it's going to raise again.

So it's a three raise dough we're doing here.

This is the different shape that we're doing right here.

This is the regular Italian.

And the difference is it's pointy.

It's it's got points on the end of it instead of.

So they're different.

The reason why these are going to be stuck together.

So when you're after they're cooked, you split them apart and they're soft on the sides.

Softer crust.

You make a flat loaf.

It is very similar to rolls in its own way.

It's our version of rolls before it goes in the oven.

We score with a board.

And to make the to make the individual, there's between 6 and 9 nice pieces to it.

As beloved as this Italian bread is, no one working here today is Italian.

My family anyway, has been Greek the whole time.

So I mean, there's other there's been other partners that have probably been Italian that I don't even know about.

But there were seven owners, seven partners way back when we first opened up in 1895, and my grandfather came from Greece in 1926 and got a job here.

As a baker.

And then my dad came in 1948 from Greece.

He ended up being sole owner in 1974, and that's when I started.

When they made the ovens a long time ago, they they figured out how to even out the heat.

So everything pretty much comes out at the same time.

Some people eat the crust, put the crust inside they eat the middle.

Me, I eat the whole thing.

So, you know, the bread is this spectacular and it's just awesome.

Not many places you can go in and buy a loaf of bread and fresh out of the oven like that and just eat it.

There's nothing about it I would change.

I have fun with the customers.

I have fun with my crew.

The great number of great people to work with.

And, we have fun and, you know, it makes their day go by that much easier.

There may be no easy day in any bakery.

And when you bake a variety of good things, it gets more complicated.

But an unusual location off the coast of Massachusetts may make things more interesting.

We are in the headlands of Martha's Vineyard Island on the westernmost point, and we now call it Aquinnah If you're driving towards the beautiful Gay Head Cliffs and the old Gay Head Lighthouse, you may spot the sign for the Orange Peel Bakery.

It's owned and run by Julie Vander Hoop, who heats up this wood fired oven every morning.

I am both a town resident and a Wampanoag Indian Native American, and we have lived here for hundreds of years.

I was born here and my father was born here, and my father's father was born here.

There's a small shop and kitchen space close by.

The oven.

While it's heating up, you may find Julie and her assistant, Katie Rupert getting items ready to be baked and put on the shelves.

In the summer, A lot of people come here after the beach and they're on vacation, and that's great.

And then as the seasons change, it's fall and winter.

It becomes kind of this hub of where the talk of the town happens.

Hey Julie, good morning!

Oh yes.

Yay!

I can tell on you Martha to make my day.

I live here, and I converted my garage into my commercial kitchen.

So what do you want to do when you greet people into your home?

You want it to be warm, and you want them to find something that makes them very happy, very comfortable.

And that's what we try to do.

Hey, I've got one with poppy and the rest regular guys.

Is this good?

Haven't even had a chance to bag them yet.

It's great.

Worth it.

When the oven is hot enough, Julie cleans out the coals and ashes and biscuits and breads start going in.

I love my oven for so many reasons.

It's made of what they call terre-blanche in French, which translates to white earth, and it is the most thermodynamic clay in the world, which means that it holds temperatures at a great rate.

The clay oven is a dome inside the structure.

On the outside.

I could have made it any any material.

I chose the field stones, because it resembles the place that we are.

I love, I love the bread she produces and and the sweets.

And I think it's, I think it's a great thing.

And I think she's become so well known, not only in town, but on the island.

We are open 24 seven.

The door is never locked, and we are an honor system.

Stand.

And I've seen people in hurricanes.

In winter storms come up to my door with flashlights to find something.

I named it orange Peel because most people don't know that the tool that you use to to put your bread in the big paddle spatula is called the peel.

And so that's the peel.

Everybody comes in and they go, well, do you put orange peel in everything?

No, we don't, but for some reason, you know, orange being the color of fire, I just said, okay, that's that's good enough for me.

Tonight is a pizza night guys.

If you're around and not out at the outermost umbrella, do a pizza night tonight.

Pizza night is a tradition here.

Usually Wednesday evening, starting at five.

A hot fire is built in the oven and people gather.

And, you know, we always say, bring a topping, but or bring something to share.

It's more about that than you know.

And if you forget a topping, then share your smile.

Well, we do.

We spin the dough and then put the sauce on and put the cheese on, and then we hand it to the person to decorate it.

I recall reading something, when Julie first opened this bakery and started these pizza nights about wanting to kind of bring the community together, and it seems to have worked very well.

And when you have an oven as big as ours, you open it up to the community to feed them.

And that's a traditional thing, I think worldwide.Pizza night or weekday morning, this place works.

Thank you.

We find a lot of entertainment and the people that come here and want to enjoy what we have to offer.

So it's really nice.

Of course, enjoying what bakeries offer may be the big motivator for customers, even in the very early morning.

We open at four, and so most of the donuts are all fried and done by 4:00 430 in the morning.

So these bakers have been here for hours already at Sluy's Poulsbo Bakery, rolling and prepping long, doughy tubes that will become cinnamon rolls.

They're cutting donuts.

They're loading trays with a variety of goodies.

Dan Sluys runs this place.

We're in Washington State and we are west of Seattle.

If you go across the water on a ferry, we're about 30 minutes across the water and another 15 20 minute drive or you can drive the long way.

That's about an hour drive.

The town is called Poulsbo, and it's sometimes called Little Norway because of all the Norwegians who settled here.

People come to Poulsbo, tourists to go to Sluys, specifically to the bakery.

I think it's the best part of Poulsbo.

I think Sluys Bakery is, is Poulsbo.

Basically, the bakery itself has been here since, about 1907, in that area.

And originally it was called the Star Bakery.

Dan's father, Marion Sluys started Sluys Bakery here in 1966.

People will walk in the door and they say, wow, you know, I haven't seen anything like this since I was a kid.

We just do everything Four things that are very important.

And I learned this a long time ago.

It's got to look good.

It's got it tastes good, and it's got to be served by people that really like people.

And what can I get for you, sir?

And then it has to be priced fair.

Not high, not low, but fair.

And there's, you know, you hear this saying location, location, location that's in there somewhere, but it's probably number five.

Marion's wife, Loretta, was also a guiding force, especially in the front of the store.

You want your shelves, everything to be full and inviting for people.

When you watch people coming in.

I have threatened to just to hand them a big bag and get one of each because it's hard to decide.

These are for my husband.

These are his favorite, gingerbread guys.

This bakery is renowned for a whole grain bread called Poulsbo Bread that was decades ahead of its time.

They still make it here.

Drops in to rollers here, comes out here, it starts rolling up on the screen.

Comes out here, goes underneath where you can't see it.

It comes out a little loaf of bread.

Then there's the final rise or proof.

Then baking.

And when it's done Dan can show you the technique for getting finished.

Poulsbo bread out of the pans.

There's an art of lifting it up and pulling the pan out from under it.

And it's always fun when you have somebody new trying it because they bash it.

They throw the bread out of the pan up in the air.

Normally.

The sinful thing that I love coming here for is these Viking cups.

These ones here, these we call our small Viking.

What they'll do is they'll dip them in glaze.

We have a custard glaze that we put on them and then, they put cream cheese in the middle.

It is cream cheese icing special we make here.

We've put that by hand on top of these.

My favorite thing to do is I actually I like to, just, you know, kind of tear off a little layer and layer there.

You're supposed to eat the two together.

But I watch a lot of people and they lick the center out and then eat the cup or sometimes I just like to eat right into it.

It is gooey too.

My favorite thing is going from the, from the center.

Hard to eat it in the car, so you have to eat it before you get to the car it's right at the end of the roll.

And, you can kind of like.

I tell you, you need to have a washcloth and a napkin when you eat this, because it'll it'll squish all over your face.

I love these things.

Can't you can't go to pools without stuffing for for donuts.

And every time it's something different.

Good.

We're a big part of this town.

The town is a big part of us.

So the two are synonymous to each other.

It's fun, working and talking to people and selling them a good product that they're going to enjoy, and they're going to come back for more.

I mean, I like coming in early.

I like, I like creating things.

I like hearing, you know, customers go, oh my God, that's so good.

You know, I mean, those type of things, it gives you a good feeling.

If you do those things, my belief is that people will come to you if you treat them right and, serve them good food, they'll come back.

Yeah.

Good baked goods.

And repeat customers are crucial to any bakery success.

Even when the bakery doesn't stand still in Durham, North Carolina, in a modest house in a nice neighborhood, an enterprising young woman named Rhonda Jones runs part of her bakery out of her home.

I've had my kitchen inspected by the Department of Agriculture for North Carolina, and then started building the business from there.

So the first, say, 5 or 6 years, I did it for Thanksgiving and Christmas only.

And then since March of 2013, I launched a dessert truck.

And so now I'm able to go out to, you know, festivals, food truck rodeos.

I actually set up at a place called Full Steam Brewery, which is downtown Durham.

I'm there twice a month, and then actually today I'm out at Cocoa Cinnamon, which is a local coffee house, and they also sell my cake by the slice.

Ok, so this is the first people that ordered Here.

Here's your cake.

Yay!

Thank you.

But before she gets to go out on the truck, Rhonda bakes here at home.

After coming back from a cruise to the Grand Cayman and Cozumel, I brought back what I considered to be a little too much rum.

I actually started making rum cakes.

Seven different flavors of the rum cake is what I actually do, but the Brown Sugar Vanilla rum cake is my signature flavor and the most requested.

The yellow cake.

It's good.

I would say a hint of the rum.

The rum is not overpowering.

But you do know it's there.

I had this cake before but this is the signature and I know of their other flavors.

But I've only had this one.

This is my absolute favorite.

You know, normally a batch for me, I make about six cakes at a time.

And I put out six individual bowls and I hand mixed them just like an electric hand mixer.

Rhonda calls her business Chez-moi Bakery.

I've always had a love for French growing up over the years.

The name Chez-moi it means my place.

Some people say my home.

It seemed appropriate being that I do bake out of my home.

Here's your slice as well.

Thank you.

Enjoy.

Thanks.

You're welcome.

Of course.

It's always been just word of mouth.

And now, of course, social media is really booming, so it's expanding by leaps and bounds.

And I knew I had the passion for baking, but I felt that disconnect, you know, being in the kitchen by myself all the time and just kind of handing the cakes off, never really having a chance to, you know, talk to my customers and make that connection.

Well, hello, how are you?

I have seen her, at Full Steam Brewery.

I've seen her at food truck rodeos.

I have followed her on Facebook.

She has a following.

My dad, in his later years would call her the cake lady.

Tell the cake lady to bring the cake over.

That's where the truck came in.

And since food trucks were really becoming a big thing in Durham fast, I decided that would be the easiest way to make that connection with my customers.

And found a little truck on Craigslist, had a wrap put on it and the rest is history.

Hi, I'm doing great, thanks.

What do you have to do today?

Today, we have brown sugar vanilla rum cake.

Its always good.

Okay, sounds good.

I don't know if you noticed, but on the brown sugar vanilla rum cake, there's brown sugar on the bottom of it.

And along with the soak, it makes a nice little crunch on the bottom.

It's it's sweet, but, not too sweet.

It's got a little, crunch from it, from the brown sugar.

And I'm really surprised at how moist it is.

In the soak, There's water, sugar, butter.

And then after all of that melts down, then I also add additional rum.

So you have plenty of rum in it.

It's like you taste the rum after the fact.

I think it's just enough to give it flavor.

So, you know, of course, they call it a soak because you're soaking the cake.

That's a lot of liquid.

It's two cups of liquid that go into, each cake.

And everybody thinks the rum cake that they've had in the past is delicious.

Until they have this.

I think bakeries are in every local shops pretty important to, to the vibe of the city.

I think it works because she is able to connect with people.

Well, it's her.

Yeah, it's more than.

It's more than this.

I love it.

I mean, we're getting a lot of food trucks in the area, and for anyone to have their own business, I think that we here, we really support those businesses, especially when it's really good food.

I still enjoy it, you know, of course, I would love every single day to sell out and every single day to sell tons of cake.

It doesn't always happen.

But yeah, even those bad days, I'm still pretty happy just being on the truck.

Okay?

Making your dream bakery into a real business may lead to happiness.

And in Portland, Maine, there may be more evidence of that.

Even in the early morning hours at the Standard Baking Company.

It's in the bottom of an unusual building at the back of a big parking lot off Commercial Street.

It is a very unusual building.

A little two story warehouse that is sort of the last of its kind amidst all the, you know, the hotels and offices.

Matt James is one of the owners and founders of the Standard Baking Company.

When we designed the space, we wanted to people to be able to look in and see the production, and we always thought it was really good for for the production people just to be able to see the light of day and see that there were people coming in and appreciating, appreciating their work.

It's manual labor, but I mean, it's fun.

You're working with things, you're creating with things.

You get to see people come in and smile.

It's a feel good job.

You know, this morning, Katherine Elliott is in charge of the baking.

She loads many shapes of bread into the mighty three deck oven.

The machine that helps is called simply the loader.

Obviously its better than doing it by hand.

There's no way you would ever be able to do it by hand.

I mean, the oven deck is so deep, so you can load, we load 15 baguettes at a time.

The oven room is one of the busiest places in the bakery.

It operates from about, 3 a.m.

until about 9:30, 9:30 at night.

Retail staff, they arrive at about 6 a.m.. They'll start bringing baskets full of bread, and they will start stocking all of the, natural leaven, breads that were baked, the night before.

Victoria Perry works at the front counter.

I love coming in in the morning because this whole area is clear and everything is fresh and it's warm, and we're just, you know, making a beautiful presentation for everybody.

So I that is my favorite shift.

The morning buns are definitely the most popular.

As far as breakfast pastries go, although the croissants and the almond croissants are really, really popular as well.

We open at seven sharp every day.

Good morning.

Come on in.

There is usually a line I would like four blueberry scones Four blueberry scones.

The other owner and founder of Standard Baking Company is Matt's wife, Allison.

Pray.

I think breakfast the morning period is, is a popular time for people to come to the bakery.

And so that's, you know, if they're picking up a loaf of bread, of course, they're going to pick up a pastry and get a cup of coffee.

And I know that they have killer baguettes, which is what he just picked up.

So we just come here every now and then to pick up some grub, a little food, little snack while you walk around the old park.

It's perfect.

We have three kids, so between all of us, we cover both bread and sweet, but we tend to go with more of the sweet things when we're going to the bakery.

It's the heart of Portland.

It's a place that locals and visitors just thrive on.

So this is where we make all of our pastries.

We have a pastry crew of about five people, and they start at 3:00 in the morning, shaping, shaping pastries and baking them off.

Here we have some chocolate chip cookie dough that is being scooped, and shortly it will go in the oven.

So this is a small room to produce all of the pastry that we make, but we do our best.

This is our make up area.

This is where our bread shaping happens.

Winston is shaping Pan de Mie.

It's a white fine crumb sandwich bread.

He is masterful at shaping these loaves.

He also is a bread mixer.

So he mixes many of these doughs.

So all day long we have bread dough coming into this room and being shaped and divided on these tables.

So now we'll head over to the mixing area.

And Jeff is mixing our bread doughs that will be shaped later today and baked tomorrow.

These will be for sale tomorrow.

Is this the pain au levain?

Okay.

Pain you know, it's French for bread and levain is the French for the leavening.

It's a naturally yeasted bread.

And we make the levain or the starter from, the liquid white starter.

Ellen Lyford has worked here for 11 years, and then the bread is made.

It's all ready to use.

It's full of natural yeast.

And that's what we use to make the pain au levain, the levain starter.

We were inspired by bakeries in France, village bakeries, neighborhood bakeries in Paris, and we thought this would be this kind of a bakery where they were doing, like a traditional French baguette, focaccia, croissants, morning buns, these sorts of things.

Anybody would like these things.

So we decided to give it a give it a shot.

Well, we've been doing it for 20 years.

20 years from now, I can imagine still doing the same thing.

I might not be as fast.

It's still fun to do.

All the hard work, may have an element of fun, even for a long time.

This is the Minerva Bakery in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh.

Before the doors open at seven, there's work going on in the baking department where Mark Menezes, whose family owns this place, is already rolling.

We get it usually at 4:00 in the morning.

Normally right now we're making dinner rolls Dinner rolls is the big deal for the Thanksgiving holiday.

In a room not far from here, Marks sister, Kathy Harvey, is decorating cakes.

Everybody has their own style.

My mom, very good decorator.

My father.

Kathy and Mark's parents still live upstairs here and they know this business and its history.

Irene Menezes is their mother.

Well, we've been in business a long time.

George Menezes is their father.

My dad started the bakery in 1923, but not in this location.

It started out on what was called Walnut Street.

And then in 1940, he came here.

And we've been here ever since.

Thank God we still we survived.

And for some reason or another, he he like the name Minerva.

Maybe because he thought it rhymed with Menezes, I don't know.

I always like to kid everybody, you know, they said, well, your name is Menezes, You know where the name Minerva come from?

And I always like to tell people, well, that Minerva is the Greek goddess of donuts.

So.

And a lot of people say, oh, really?

Everybody knows Minerva Bakery.

Yeah, they come in.

It's a small, family owned bakery.

Even though it may look like we produce a lot of stuff when we do, but it's all handmade.

There's nothing automated about the bakery.

And I've come here, my grandparents, to bring me here when I was little.

I have been coming here all my life.

When I was younger, my mother used to stop here every day on her way home from work.

My mom used to send me down those steps here to come down here and get a pie.

And it better be warm when you get it home.

I stop here usually on Saturday mornings, and get maple rolls.

Maple coffee cake rolls.

I'm number 15.

I'm going to get my cupcakes and I'm on the road.

And it's not just customers who are loyal here.

Employees too, some family, some not tend to stick around.

Long time off and on.

40 years maybe, Have been working at the bakery here for about 30 years.

27 years, 40 years.

My grandma and grandfather lived on the second floor, and my mom and my dad and my brother and I lived on the third floor.

So I'd walk down here for an hour and a half or so, go upstairs where we lived.

Get changed and go to school right?

Right across the street here.

That vintage contraption cuts a round pan full of dough into equal pieces.

Well, this machine just cuts them into three dozen.

Makes it easier.

Each of the three dozen pieces will become a dinner roll.

These are our dinner rolls.

Two of the styles that we make, this is called, a double knot.

And this is called a braided.

Yes.

You can braid with one strand or one piece of dough.

And there you have a braided dinner roll.

I like their lady locks here, and they're thumbprints those are the best.

We sell a lot of the lady locks because they're good.

Little piece of plastic.

Here.

If I didn't do it this way, I'd have to use my hand.

And this saves a lot of time.

Nice and full.

They made my wedding cake.

They made my divorce cake.

Their cakes.

Oh my goodness.

Oh, melt in your mouth, not in your hands.

Probably in a couple hours.

I'll straighten it and ice it.

Then the decorator will decorate.

My wife's been coming here for a long time.

She's from McKeesport.

She always teases around now that she got both her wedding cakes here.

I'm number two.

So now I'm just going to put it in the cooler for a little while, and eventually we'll make, some Paskas.

Paska, a traditional Eastern European Easter bread is one of their specialties.

Paska was just at Easter time, but now it's for every holiday.

They do it for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's.

But really, the customers want Paskas every day.

I think this might be one of the last bakeries.

You can get boxes tied with string.

You know, you can go to some of these other little donut shops and everything, and they don't have the quality that they use here at Minervas.

Quality.

Quality.

quality makes everything customer after customer says the same thing.

And, and and they expect a good quality and they're still willing to pay the price.

Plus the people at Minervas you get to know them and then you just will always want to keep coming back.

Good.

You too.

I thank you very much.

Happy holiday.

See ya Patty, have a good holiday.

Bye bye.

It's good to have a place to go and get the baked goods that you've known and loved your whole life.

And if you're not near home, you're lucky to find a place that can make familiar treats.

Here in Lafayette, Indiana, bakers are shaping and assembling and baking many different kinds of cakes and cookies and Mexican breads.

Most with a certain sweetness.

With the Hispanics, or the Mexicans called sweet bread.

They do all the pastries, everything you eat donuts, churros, cake.

You need sweet bread for everything That's Rosa Montoya, who owns Mama Ines Mexican Bakery.

She's originally from the city of Zacatecas in central Mexico.

It's in Mexico.

There is a lot of bakeries.

Even in a small town there is a bakery.

She's had a bakery here in Lafayette since the late 1990s, but she moved the business into this building that used to be a Ryan Steakhouse in 2014.

Its more like a type of construction.

Building type.

It's been here for a long time.

Not in this location, but down the street.

It has, but it just expanded and it bloomed ever since it came here.

It's one of the bigger, I think, places we know you can get some good Mexican bread from.

We're from California originally, so we love places that remind us of back home the tradition of a Mexican bakeries grab a tray, grab a piece of tongs, and serve yourself.

Are those the custard ones?

Yes.

Thats the one.

I'll have two of those.

You buy more because you don't have to keep asking, can I have one of these?

And did you just grab whatever you want.

Every, Mexican always buy some of this, which is a Mexican sweet bread.

They are Conchas and they always go in these colors.

I like the pink conchas, what we call conchas.

And those are my favorite.

The other very famous thing in the Mexican bakery.

And we make them a handmade because, these are the churros.

Churros are very, very popular.

Her mom and dad are looking forward to us bringing churros So when it becomes it's our happiness.

That's our happy moment.

A lot of the bread is like it is back at home, so it's got a good taste to it.

It's better than American Donuts, so it just makes it come back in.

The cakes are better too.

I like them, I don't know, I have to show you that three milk cake, which is a very, very common and very famous here tres leches.

Their cakes are really good too.

They're Pastel de tres leches, which is like this.

So it's not just your typical white strawberry chocolates, you know, a Mexican traditional cake.

Growing up, my dad would go to the panaderia pick up the pan dulce have it at the house before everybody came home to have it with their coffee.

So, yeah, it's definitely a tradition.

It's part of our culture.

I work right next door, so we come here to, like, almost pretty much every day, almost to get, you know, bread for going home or, you know, it's not every day it's at least three times a week.

And these are the tamales right here.

We have them out from 5 a.m.

to 10 p.m.. Hundreds of those.

Thousands of those.

I can eat tamales every day.

Yeah.

All done.

Youre done?

Si.

Okay.

Back here, we have the kitchens, and this is a cake room.

We are already talking about the three milk cake.

It's a mix of three different milks, which is condensed, evaporated and, whole milk.

In the outside is going to look just like any cake.

He's a very good cake decorator.

And we only use, whipped cream.

See, the other bakeries, use, different icings.

We only use whipped cream.

Nearby.

There's a tamale kitchen where thousands of tamales are put together, and we make different flavors because people, they eat a lot of hot stuff.

And in the adjacent big baking kitchen, all the sweet breads, the pan dulce, are shaped and assembled.

He's covering conchas.

And we have bakers 24 hours a day when they leave in order to come in.

This is a 24 hour thing back in the kitchen.

It's a big, busy bakery.

I love everything about it.

This is my dream job because I love people I love, I love to decorate cakes.

I like to be in charge So all my favorite things are here.

We are very proud of this bakery.

Pride in the quality of your product.

Maybe essential to any bakery success, but your product may even be one that's slightly out of place and maybe unexpected.

Silverbow is a bakery, oldest bakery, and we make bagels.

That is our number one bagels.

This is the Silverbow Bakery and you are in Juneau, Alaska, which is in the Southeast Panhandle of Alaska.

This bakery is most famous for its traditional New York style bagels.

Silver bow is owned and run by Jill Ramil and her husband Ken Alper.

They live here with their kids, twin daughters Tilly and Adina.

Would you would you like to talk about why you like living in a bagel place?

Because I love bagels.

That's a good reason.

And the girls older brother, Solomon.

We moved upstairs in an apartment when I was about four and a half years old.

And we've lived here ever since.

Whenever I come downstairs from my house, I just get all these smells of what's happening.

And I think that's really awesome.

And it makes me want to eat everything here.

We sell a lot of sandwiches, and we've grown our menu quite a bit because we couldn't really have this little niche business, that I thought we might be able to.

The best food option they have here is probably the cookies because they're massive and tastes really good.

Well, this place is the oldest bakery in Alaska.

There's been a bakery on this piece of property since 1902 actually.

My mom grew up in Staten Island, and my dad grew up in Montvale, new Jersey, and they've always loved bagels growing up.

So my parents just wanted to make delicious, New York bagels here.

Great bagel requires, first of all, high gluten flour.

Heavy flour.

We have a cook who works here that makes the bagel dough, and that gets done during the day.

That cook is often George Jackson from Ketchikan.

He's the prep cook who makes not only the dough, but also the bagels themselves.

I mean, anyone can make a bagel.

You could make a bagel.

I could teach you how to make a bagel.

But what makes a good bagel is the person preparing the bagel and the mood they're in.

I'm in a good mood.

This calls for 1.25oz of yeast, 12oz of malt.

I like to say this in the capital, but 12.1oz is good enough for government work.

26 quarts of water for this recipe, set the emergency stop, and push start.

Now it's time for me to start getting the station set up.

It's got 15 minutes.

Timers running.

This is a really amazing machine.

The bagel former.

And what I like to say, it's something that you would think you would find out of a Dr.

Seuss book, because the way it works together, it's just an amazing machine.

A lot of people are really interested when people come over and look at the bagels.

I'm making something you see out of Whoville.

But, you know, I really like Dr.

Seuss, so I'm thinking the person that designed this machine is also a big fan.

Of The most important part of a traditional bagel, though, is that it's boiled in water.

A bagel must be boiled in water.

What that does, is it gelatinizes the outer level layer of starch molecules on the crust of the bagel.

So then when it goes into a 500 degree oven, you'll get a shiny exterior, a nice heavy crust.

And then on the interior, it's chewy and heavy from the high gluten flour.

When it floats the top, he grabs it out with a scoop and he throws them onto wet canvas boards, lines them up, six to a tray.

This is everything bagels.

Puts them in the oven.

12 boards to a an oven tray.

Our oven has six rotating trays.

And then when the top of the bagel dries, he will flip it onto the stone.

So bake for five or so minutes on a wet canvas.

And that will enable him to be able to flip it over without sticking.

And that's what the wet canvas will do.

And then when he flips it, he bakes the rest of the time on the on the hard stone.

One more flip.

The baker who knows all of this is Danny Luciano.

The front one.

The front side always get burned so fast, so I had to rotate them in order to evenly bake.

You know, when they're done.

Danny transfers the bagels from the oven to the bins up front.

The best thing is coming.

When we first open for a hot bagel this morning, I got my favorites its an everything bagel with a lox cream cheese spread.

This is a cinnamon and raisin bagel with plain cream cheese.

Honestly, I prefer the plain bagel.

I got, everything bagel with egg and cheddar.

Who wants a plain bagel?

These are sunflower wheat.

These are good for you.

The bagel, cream cheese and lox.

That's what I'm having for breakfast is a classic.

With the lox, you put plain cream cheese on it, which is whipped cream cheese.

It's a very, very soft cream cheese.

And then on top of that we put capers.

Its always an Alaskan made lox because the salmon around here is what the state's actually famous for.

And then the lox and then the tomatoes and the onions.

We do our best to put bagels on the map, but the salmon were famous since long before we were born.

It's delicious.

It is.

Don't tell anybody, I said.

This is so much better than Nova Scotia salmon.

It's good.

Crunchy on the outside, soft in the inside.

And I really love these very good bagels.

Oh, warm baked goods in the morning seem to have a universal appeal.

It doesn't matter where you are.

You could be in Sacramento California in the parking lot of a strip mall on Freeport Boulevard, where there's an odd round building that houses the Mahoroba Japanese Bakery.

It opens at 7 a.m.

and Elena Fong helps get things in motion at Mahoroba.

It opened in July of 2009.

I was one of the first hired, so I've been here a while.

Typically, the bakers come around midnight or 11 p.m.

the night before, and then around 6:30, 7 workers like me, like the front workers.

We come in and we help put all the bread out into the cases and make sure everything's all set for the day.

Everything here, maybe a few arrangements, but mainly everything is very, very traditional.

And then I get a sweet cream cheese.

Okay.

And a Kobe cream delight to go.

Benjamin Winterton also works here, sometimes as a translator.

He knows his boss, who speaks only Japanese, is involved in three bakeries, and he likes the sound of this city's name.

This is, the owner right there as, not a scaremongering cheese originally.

You know, his family owns, one in Japan, and then he opened one in Nepal.

And then from there he came here afterwards.

So in Japan, the most famous flower is, the sakura, the cherry blossom, and, Sacramento is just, like, perfect.

So usually Americans are very sweet.

Ours isn't so sweet where it's overwhelming, but more of like, you kind of get to enjoy the tastes of it.

So not all the pastries here are sweet.

They make savory buns, too.

Can I just get the bacon and egg, please?

If you go to Japan, most bakeries, self-serve over there, you know, you get your trays, you get your tongs, and you pick out and you go to the register and you pay.

Here we try to keep it as close as possible.

So basically we have the customers come in and they'll choose what they want and we'll, we'll grab them for them with the tray and then we'll walk it to the register.

Loren Okamoto works here too.

I first, like everyone else, came here as a customer and I fell in love.

I ate it every day.

If I wasn't working here, I'd still be coming here every day.

So mind you, I. I love this place.

This one is the the new one I got.

It's a raisin apple.

Doesnt it look decadent?

It looks good.

Everything is so good that I try to try to get everything at least once.

And since I come here so frequently, I. I tend to try everything.

So, this one here is the yakisoba pan.

It's got the kind of like a hot dog bun on the outside with, noodles got bits of pork and cabbage inside.

I love everything.

My absolute favorite is probably the cream cheese.

The Danish ones and the sweet cream delight.

You guys, you guys are here documenting my cheat day.

This is bad.

So?

So I got this for one of my coworkers.

This is the, Kobe cream.

This is the sweet cream.

And that's the one that I like the best.

The one here with the happy face is, looks very nice.

It's very popular with the kids.

It's got, like, chocolate custard inside.

So this is a strawberry ankl cream on the bottom.

And has a sweet red bean paste with.

And then on top it has a fresh whipped cream.

And a strawberry.

Its very good I feel like it's a very good combination of Japanese and American style, because red bean paste is a very traditional ingredient in Japanese pastries, and so adding the whipped cream in the strawberry kind of like a little, strawberry shortcake kind of feeling to it just because mongochese has been doing it so long and he knows it like the back of his hand.

I'll take, three Kobe creams.

This one here is the Kobe cream, our most popular one here in the store.

It's got the vanilla custard inside.

Lots of it.

Just pouring out.

Very good.

In the Japanese bakery, they actually sell 2000 of these a day.

And so it's like got to make every hour 400 of these.

Yeah.

The name of the Kobe cream delight is the place where hes from.

Every time I have a guest come in from out of town, I bring them here, even if it's just for one day.

This is the go to place for me when a lot of people come, they meet new people, and then they just.

This just becomes the new place to meet new friends and everything.

We met Terry Irakeda, who comes here twice a week to meet with a group of her friends, only one of whom, Minnie Isari, showed up this day.

That's enough.

We all meet here and stay about an hour or an hour and a half.

This is our favorite place.

Unusual baked products here.

Sort of, Japanese and American combined, you know, and, it's really unusual.

Yeah, it really is.

Do you have a favorite thing here?

Bacon and eggs.

We have our favorites here.

I think this is the only one.

That's why it's so popular.

And he's so good.

Is buisness good?

Very good.

So everybody a lot of people will come and know that he can't speak English, even though, like they might, but they'll still say, like, high and stuff.

I'll usually stop him while he's making bread just to say thank you and hi and all that.

It's very nice to have an authentic Japanese bakery and have it so popular.

Popularity can mean business.

And it's good when folks come to socialize at a bakery, like in Missoula, Montana, there's this beautiful little business called Bernice's Bakery, a homestyle bakery.

It's very it's really warm and cozy and inviting.

Everybody's really friendly.

The baked goods are something that you would, you know, your grandmother would maybe.

The place is owned and run by two food service veterans, Marco Lytic and his wife, Christine Lytic, who used to be the chef owner of a high end restaurant here in town.

A huge part of what my job has been is taking Bernices from being a bakery, which is an incredible, unique business in its own, but pushing it in this sort of chef like way.

I think I the thing I take the most pride in is our staff.

We love our staff, our staff is amazing and they're amazing people.

We're separating eggs, to get egg whites for Italian buttercream.

Who doesn't want a little bag of chocolate chip cookies?

This is the base for our lemon blueberry cheesecake bar, and it's, it's our all purpose crumble.

You have to keep an eye on it so you don't over mix it.

Itll get tough, like bread form gluten.

So it's not like a traditional, like, French artisan bakery.

Like her croissants are.

They're they're heftier.

They've got a little bit more weight to them.

And we do that intentionally because that's our style.

We use a lot of butter here.

These are for our wholesale.

These go up to the Good Food Store and Orange Street Food Farm.

Every day.

That's where I eat my breakfast.

We're going to head over to the Orange Street Food Farm, which is one of the nice local grocery stores here.

We'll give them some cookies and and see how things are going there.

It's a big staff.

And so essentially you want to know what Marco and Christine do.

We manage a staff of 35 people.

And we run a business.

So it's it's a lot a lot of eggs so you use a gallon of egg whites and 18 pounds.

of butter a large amount of sugar as well.

We've been here for 36 years.

Bernice's has it has had three female owners.

So Becky Bollinger was the first owner, and she owned it for 11 years, followed by Esther Chesson and then followed by my husband and myself.

When looking at the bakery, the bakery used to be just this just this little shed spot when it was opened by Becky, the first owner.

Becky, her given name was actually Bernice, but she went by Becky.

So when we bought the bakery, what we were buying and what we were committed to is the community that's here.

When I first got here 13 years ago and was working for Esther before we bought the bakery, we made eight cakes a day.

That was it.

We now make 50 cakes a day.

So what we did is turn a garage out back into a full functioning finishing room.

So the product we prepare here gets transferred out to that room, and then the decorators get to work in that room in a more isolated environment, just trying to make everything look as great as possible.

So we said, well, if we don't love it in five years, we'll sell it.

But now it's 11 years later.

So here we are, 18 pounds, one gallon of egg whites, the cookies.

Two people have just gone haywire for cookies in the last few months, it seems like.

So this is the creme de la creme right here.

This baby molasses cookie.

It probably has more to do with the fact that I've kind of got old lady taste tastebuds.

I love gingerbread, love molasses.

You know, you'd think a cookie would be simple, but everybody loves them.

So, it's called a scroll design, something we use a lot on our cakes.

And I kind of adapted it to work on cupcakes.

Bernice's is a rare bakery that also serves lunch specials every day.

Lunch came aboard, about two years after Christine and I bought it.

This is curry roasted cauliflower and, with an herb cream cheese.

And what we realized is our staff was running on sugar and coffee.

Well, some bakeries like to show off their bread products by, you know, serving sandwiches.

And so we created lunches for our staff.

Truly.

People are going to dig it.

I'm positive.

So Manny's our chef.

I love what he does.

But what lunch did is just provided a place for people to come throughout the course of the day.

And it and it's steady.

They're flowing.

You know, when people come into a place they don't want to be the only one sitting at a table, they want to be at a place that there's tables available, but there's other people, there's activity, there's a community around you.

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

The regulars that come in at like 6:00, 630.

Those guys are here on the dot every day.

Well it on a, on a Monday.

It's it's good to get here early and read the paper.

I think coming here for at least 25 years, I lived three doors down and I come here every morning at the same time.

But I have to get here early.

Read the paper.

About 15 years ago, people started talking to me.

Phil introduced himself, and I ordered the same thing of a raspberry jam, croissant and a decaf with a refill.

I love the ambiance.

I love the art.

I love the floor, the the the warm heater over here with the flame.

I sit here, George sits there.

Phil sits there.

Normally Orrin sits there and I'm kind of a private person.

But here it's kind of a social thing and always the same people.

And we chat back and forth, you know?

Yeah, I, I was married to this wonderful woman for 38 years and she let me come down here.

Of course, it's a nice, nice group of guys.

But she passed away suddenly last fall, 85 days ago.

And, the first person, I mean, I, I got home from the hospital at three in the morning, and I came here at six, and the first person to give me a hug was Phil.

All of those guys that come in in the morning like clockwork.

They are the they're the, the glue and everyone arrived and they took me to my house and and gave me food and, and took care of me and and so it's it's that sense of community that's important to me.

And, and I needed help.

And so it's kind of a family, my, my family and these are my friends.

That's why the favorite piece is the people.

That's why the piece that keeps my husband and I focus on what we're doing keeps us committed to the excellence that we require from everybody.

Is that we have a family.

We have 35 people in our staff.

That's our family.

And then we have a significant portion of Missoula.

That's our family.

What's not to love?

Oh, it's easy to love a bakery, its products and its people.

And you're lucky if there's a great one near you to have somewhere really delicious that you can come, any time of day and get get something good is, is a real plus for the neighborhood.

But great bakeries are also worth searching for no matter where you go.

I hope that one day there are bakeries on every corner, and that we we get accustomed to that they're important and tasty businesses that help make communities more delicious life sweeter, and the world a more exciting and scrumptious place.

And if I can do it with cookies and milk, then that's fine with me.

Yeah.

For extra video baked goods and to add your favorite bakery to our list, go to pbs.org.

Slash food.

A few great Bakeries is available on DVD.

To order, visit shop PBS.org or call 1-800- PLAY-PBS.

A Few Great Bakeries was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

Be more PBS.