The Village Bakery in West, Texas’ original Czech bakery and home of the state’s original kolaches, has been sold and will reopen, its new owner said Wednesday.
Shelly Miller, owner of the Village Shoppe next to the bakery at 113 E. Oak St. in the McLennan County town, purchased the 75-year-old bakery.
The Village Bakery has been closed for five years since owner Mimi Montgomery Irwin passed away suddenly. A former vice president at Macy’s in New York, she came home in 2003 to run the bakery her family founded in 1951.
In a 1986 interview in the Waco Tribune-Herald, founder WO Montgomery said, “I am the kolache king. The other bakeries in town were just babies when I started. I was the first.”
He used recipes similar to those published in an 1879 Czech cookbook, he said.
The Village Bakery dominated kolache sales in West for decades, along with what is now Gerik’s Ole Czech Bakery, 511 W. Oak St. A now famous highway supermarket and bakery, the Czech Stop, followed in 1983.
Miller said she and her husband, Darrell, had talked about reopening the bakery for a long time and “finally decided to do it.”
The building needs renovations but will reopen using the Village Bakery’s original recipes, she said.
