 Welcome to the Shaboin County Historic Museum for our April 3rd Saturday program. We are emphasizing focusing on the area bakeries. As an example, we have a nice beautiful old-fashioned cookie machine here that was donated to us by the Johnston family, and that is what's going to welcome you to the program today. On top of that, we have several presenters that are here. We'll start with the Johnston Bakery family, Mary Pearl, one of the daughters of Joe Johnson, the starter of that business. We'll be here to talk about their bakery. From there, you will meet Greg Gallenberger from the Usberg Bakery, and next to him will be Myra from Myra's Cake. On the corner, then, you will be able to talk to Fuzzy and Donna, Jacket from Westside Bakery here in Shaboigan, along with the Fredericks family, the whole family. They have even people coming in from Vermont that are part of the program today. Next to them will be Rick Novus from City Bakery. We also have Jacob Rake from the Keele Bakery, and we also have representatives from Miller's Bakery in Plymouth. Several of these have brought samples, so there will be some delicious samples on top of everything, and we are also having a brat fry today on a hard roll, and a Johnstonville brat on that hard roll. So hopefully you enjoy the show, and we hope to see you soon. Thank you. Hi. My name is Mary Ann Pearl. My maiden name is Johnson, and my family owns Johnson Bakery in Shaboigan on Superior Avenue. We have been at the location in Shaboigan since 1957. Johnson Bakery business started in 1950, originally out in Shaboigan fall. And then we moved to Shaboigan in 1957, and that's where we are still presently right now. Right now my three brothers own and run Bakery, and of us girls, there's four girls or daughters that work there either full-time or part-time. I have behind me pictures of Bakery and some of my family members. On the table I have some of the stuff that was at the Bakery, some of it before we moved in that was down in the basement that we had put aside and saved all these years. Some of the tools are wooden, and we are not allowed to have anything wooden in the Bakery anymore. My mom and dad originally met one at Molen Bakery that was in Shaboigan also, and then they started their own business out in falls in the 50s. You got in the off table room. These here? Yes. Okay. A long time ago when they used the ladies on a cake, they maybe put powdered sugar on them and then lift them off, and it was more of a decoration on a cake. Some of them are the Christmas greetings is what I have. These were in the place when we moved in, so I'm just kind of hung on to them all these years. Okay. Oh, that is the picture of all my sisters and brothers were up in the upper windows. From left to right would be my sister Joanne, then my brother Joe, then Bob, and then the middle one is my brother Mike, and then the next one is me. And then the other picture is Judy, John, and Rita, and down below in front of the doorway is my mother kind of pointing up towards us that we had done when we remodeled the store about six, seven years ago. We completely remodeled the front store, making it a bigger cafe area for eating and coffee and going back to more or less the turn of the century look with the tin steeling and bound board floors, there's a belt driven fan that are in there, it goes back to what the original building we think might have looked like in 1892. I don't see a picture of that. I have a picture of it, I got it in my book, I'll pull it out and take it on the table. Okay. Picture at the top, one on the left is my father, and then the middle one are the three brothers that own it now, Joe, Mike, and John, and then the one on the right is my mother. The other picture over is some of my brothers and sisters and one of my sons. Hi, my name is Greg Gallenberger, and I'm the owner of the bakery in Usford. The Usford Bakery has been in business since 1929. There's been probably about four different families that owned it over the years. It's always been a family-owned business. We really take great pride in what we do. We make all our products from scratch. Our customers come from all around Sheboygan County because it's been there for a long time, so it is well-known. We make quite a few different items. Most popular items are cream-filled coffee cakes and, of course, hard rolls because Sheboygan County is well-known for its hard rolls, which is part of the reason why I think there are so many bakeries in Sheboygan. Sheboygan does have a large number of bakeries for the size of the town. My dad bought the bakery in 1979 and owned it for nine years, and then I bought it from him, and I've owned it for 25 years. My dad still comes in and helps out. He's 84 years old now, but he still enjoys coming to help us out at the bakery. We have probably about 15 employees right now, and as far as the bakeries go in Sheboygan County, we're a smaller one compared to some of the larger ones, but we like it that way. We like to stay small. We like to keep it just mainly in the family, and that way we can concentrate more on the quality of our products because we can really be more hands-on, and we don't have to use quite as many types of machines to make it by hand instead of by machine. Hi, I'm Myrith Stockdick Ishen from Myrith Country Cakes and Catering. We are a full-service bakery and catering operation, home-owned, and I started in 1986. I was engaged at the time, and my fiancee told me I'd never make it, so I had to prove them wrong. We specialize in Sheboygan County's first wedding cheesecakes since 1986, and cheesecakes are still our specialty. We have over 56 different flavors of cheesecake at this time, and are constantly trying something new. We do a lot of catering for funerals, and our slogan is, Sheboygan County, all your dessert and catering needs from birth to death. The pictures here are my mom and I did a lot of the catering. She's been in it with me from the start. She passed away in July, so that picture is special to me. The picture on the end is from our 25th anniversary, which we celebrated two years ago. Since my mother passed away, my husband has taken over a little bit more with me and been helping more with the catering. My father also helps a lot with the catering. I have eight people on staff right now, all part-time. These are some of the recent wedding pictures that I've done. Right now we're gearing up for graduation and the spring brides, and we'd love to see anybody that would need our catering or cake services come in and give us a call and set up an appointment, and we can customize things. We love to do theme-type parties. We have done taste your way around the world parties with different countries, and we love doing that kind of thing and customizing to whatever you need, price-wise, and according to your budget and your flavor desires. Hi, my name is Rick Navas, I'm the current owner of City Bakery in Sheboygan. I've been there for a little over 25 years, I've been the owner, and I've worked there for probably five or six years, I believe, before that, and bought it from a gentleman named Jim Shufflebottom. Before that, it was owned by John Foy, who had it for, I believe, probably around 10 or 15 years. Prior to that, it was owned by a gentleman named Fritz Shruhe, the Frederick Shruhe, and I believe he opened it in 1935 until probably 1960, early 60s, maybe, so they still do a lot of, at least the hard rolls are done the same way they've always been done, the sponge and dough method, which is you mix a sponge and allow it to ferment for four hours, put it back in the mixer, mix it up and then made up in the hard rolls, and then baked on the brick hearth oven, so we try to, you know, keep some of the old and add some a lot of new things, so, believe it? So, 1935, I believe, was when he first opened the bakery. Before that, I believe he worked at Moore's Bakery before that, Fritz Shruhe did, yeah, which I believe was on A Street at one time, yeah, okay, Moore's, yeah. I am Jeanette Schuch, and I am a stirkel. My parents got the baker shop at the, and we've been in that baker shop for a long time. My dad fixed it all up, he made repairs on it, and then we sold it to Fuzzy. I was in fifth grade when we purchased it, and I had two brothers, one brother was born in the baker shop, and I think my parents were in the baker shop for some 30 years. My dad, I think, was the only one that did ice carvings in town here, he had to go to the ice company to do his ice carvings because it was cold in there, and he also did a lot of wedding cakes, and he went to school, I think it's up on a boat over there, is it? She called, he went to school, and he took up some more training in decorating cakes. Some of these pictures are of me standing by the garage doors because the old ones were taken down, and these were the new ones, and this is my brother's confirmation. We had to stand in front of the baker shop, there wasn't any other place to stand and pictures taken, and these were the pictures that he bought. He got rid of the old trucks when we moved in, and these two he bought. This is the one that was driving that truck, and he had the south side run, and this one had the north side run, and I think if you could look close, my brother's sticking his head out there, and I think my dad is in the window there. So whenever we got confirmed or graduation or something, we had to go take our pictures in front of the baker shop. It's my brother that was born there, he's now 70 I think. This is me, when I was younger, was in high school, and where's my mother and dad? This is my mother and dad, he was the baker. Hi, my name is Donna Jackett, formerly Donna Hossivar, I'm a color girl, and I found Fuzzy on a blind date. I'm Fuzzy's second wife, and his first wife died of cancer, and I've been married to him for 26 years, and we've had quite a bumpy ride and a smooth ride, and it's been very exciting being in the bakery business, because there's been room in the city for all the bakeries that there were at one time. I don't know what Fuzzy would like to start talking about, I think he'd like to tell you about the bakery, and I have to tell you that it's a little joke, he did use to wear a sweatshirt that said, I'm Fuzzy the baker, and on the back it said, and my wife Donna loves my buns, so I hope you see the sense of humor in that, but here's my husband Fuzzy. And I still love her buns, and I'm Fuzzy the baker, and my real name is Leroy, but very few people that I've known over the years, some of them didn't even know my name was realized because he always called me Fuzzy, and I remember buying the place in 1965, and it was an old bakery, and I knew I had to spend a lot of time and money fixing it up, and we did over the years, we just added every year, we added some more, we added some more change things, and till the point we got it, that it's doing quite well, and the last 48 years, I think it's pretty exceptional, because some of the bakeries have shut down, or some of them are still hanging in there yet, and I just, I still enjoy going in, I don't physically bake anymore, but I still enjoy going in and overseeing and making sure everything turns out good. Can I interject something here? I was told before I married Fuzzy, that this man knew he wanted to be a baker when he was in third grade. That's living a dream for someone, I think. And I made it, and I'm very happy with it, I still enjoy it. I'm Anne Fredericks from Fredericks Bakery. My husband and my family ran the bakery for many years. I am associated with the bakery because I lived next door to Fredericks Bakery. When I was a little girl, it was Hirsch Bakery, and the Hirsch family kind of welcomed me into their home. So my history goes back from Fredericks Bakery to Jasper's Bakery to now, and Fredericks Bakery. My daughter flew in from Vermont with some showpieces, some memorabilia, and she can tell you about this. Angela, this is Angela Grigny from Vermont. I'm Angela from King Arthur Flower, and I've made these showpieces for this event today. All of these things are made out 100% out of bread dough. I use tools like exacto knives and scissors to cut these wheat shafts, exacto knives to cut these things out. We dry them in the oven for hours and hours. I think this piece dried for about 12 hours, and then it's perfectly fine to shellac, and it can be kept for years. I might add she brought these on the plane from Vermont yesterday. She flew in, and they ended up pretty good considering. And welcome to the Sheboygan County Museum. Today we are on bakeries, and if you are here now, well, I guess you may be not. There's a lot of good munchies here to eat. Right now we are showing you our carrying box from the Sheboygan Baking Company that made the golden crust bread. Now you'll have to forgive me, I'm a little young, and I don't know where all of these bakeries were. The one you're seeing now is Molens, and my husband over here used to work there when he got out of high school. Didn't you, dear? Yes. I'm a bread wrapping and slicing machine. Where was Molens? Across the street from the Palladium on New York Avenue. It was next to the Pringy Bakery, which was full of brown. Wow. Okay. For those that know where that is, that's pretty good. Coming back to the table, these three pages I took out of a 1902 cookbook that had the name of Rust and Hinsey on the front. And when you open the book, this is the cover. When you open the book, there was a cage in front and a double-sided page in the back of advertising. The rest was recipes, and I believe the book was created to maybe be given as complimentary to the customers or maybe sold. Not everyone in these advertisements had bakery, and some of them have bakery listed amongst the other things that they sold. So I'm assuming that they weren't technically a bakery, but that they sold the item, and it was probably made somewhere else. This yellow sheet is a billing from Friedrich's Bakery. This is from 1994, where we bought, I think it's some hard rolls. This is the back side of this billing. I thought the wording was pretty good. Speaking of Friedrich's Bakery, before Friedrich's, it was Hirsch in the same building, but I've just been found out that when it went from Hirsch's to Friedrich's, the city changed the house number of the building. It's still on A Street. This is a matchbook cover of Mu's MUHS. It's a bakery that was at 1128 Gehle Avenue. The building is still there to this day. The main floor is now a laundry mat, and the upper level are apartments. And then over here we have Hitzman Bakery, of which I know absolutely nothing. Moving over here, let me turn this around so maybe you can read Clunk. This is paper to wrap your loaf of bread. Moore's special is on here. And this piece of this item fits on, if you want to turn around. There is a machine here on the floor from Heisen's. And that is about the extent of the collection. Otherwise, this one down front, that is Omar Bakery. And my husband tells me that after the war, ladies would drive trucks and make home deliveries after the Second World War. But it was all women that drove and walked to the house and delivered the bakery. Don't have that feature in life anymore. Hello, my name is Jared Rek. I am 4th generation Reks Bakery out of Kiel, Wisconsin. We are just on the edge of the northern part of Sheboygan County. I've been involved with the baking industry my whole life. I'm 44 years old, and I bought the business from my parents. My parents bought the business from their parents, and my grandpa bought the business from his great uncle. The business has been in the Rek name since 1908. It has also been a bakery before it was Reks Bakery. It was a bakery that was owned by Henry Fremie. That bakery was started in 1896. So the Reks bought it in 1908, and we've had it ever since. We are a full line retail bakery. We do about 70% of our baking from scratch every day. All of our breads and rolls are made from scratch. All of our breads and rolls are made daily. We do a full line of sweets. We do cakes, pastries, Danish donuts, cookies, and almost everything in between. The only thing we don't really do are wedding cakes. We do decorated cakes. I went to Kiel High School and graduated in 1987, and after that I went up to Dunwoody Industrial Institute, which is in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It's a two-year industrial college, and I don't believe it is any longer a baking industry college, but it is a college for other industries. I graduated from there, fourth of my class, and I've been involved with Reks Bakery and baking ever since. It's actually something that is just in your blood. Either you like it or you don't like it. It's a lot of hours. The hours are early. That's probably the best part of the job. A lot of people say, how can you say that's the best part of the job, but the best part of the job is starting at 2 or 3 a.m. and being done by 11 or 12 or 1 o'clock every day. So every day of the year, no matter what, even through the winter, you have an afternoon of sunlight at your leisure. So you have a lot of free time all year long during daylight hours, which is something that's very important. It gets you out, gets you to enjoy the sunshine, and I think it lets me have a better attitude when I have sunshine all year long. We do like to have fun at our workplace. Without having fun at our workplace, you wouldn't be in this business very long. Most of the bakeries that I've been into and visit are usually the same way. People are pretty upbeat and happy and have a good sense of humor. If you don't, long hours and early hours will wear you down. We're just happy to be here and happy to be keeping the tradition going. Hello, I'm Michael Mueller. Miller's Bakery from Plymouth. My grandfather started it or bought the bakery around 1900 and stayed in the family until 1969 when we closed it up. We sold the property to the city and today there's a street and parking lot where the building was. On the table here we have a few things. There's a ledger and a little history of the bakery. Along the walls there we have pictures of our father and grandfather and showing parts of the bakery. We have calendars and different things of the bakers themselves that were working in the shop. My sister Meredith here knows a few things about the store. She worked in there a little off and on. Occasionally on the weekends when I would be back home I would have to help at the store. They were open early and stayed open all day Saturdays and dad was always insistent that we kept the trees full. What didn't get run down were there only two or three pieces left on it. They wanted those full so it looked good and at the end of the day well then you would have to clean everything up and count the change and the normal closing routine. That's a little of the history and well I guess we locked up because it was during the Vietnam War. It was hard to get help. My father was sick. He couldn't work much anymore and we thought it would be the best thing to do. So that was the end of it and it was Memorial Weekend in 1969. That's about all unless you have a question or two.