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Wilde About Texas: Czech bakery offers handmade sweet, savory treats
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Over the years traditional Czech kolaches have become a Texas breakfast staple.
In the city of West, Geriks Ole Czech Bakery makes kolaches just the way their ancestors did.
"We don't mass produce anything," Geriks Ole Czech Bakery Owner Bryan Anderson said. "There's hands that touch each one of them. Everything is handmade, from scratch. There's no pre-bought anything."
The bakery turns out kolaches by the dozens in a town that's famous for its pastry quality. In 1997, West was officially proclaimed the "Home of the Official Kolache of the Texas Legislature."
The traditional Czech dish is served with all kinds of fruit: cherry, peach, apple, apricot and strawberry. They can be made with or without cream cheese, and if sweet is not your thing, kolaches can be savory too.
"You can have kolache with fruit in it or you can have kolache with meat -a ham and cheese kolache, a sausage, a link sausage, ground sausage, sausage with cheese," Anderson said.
Geriks also rolls out cinnamon rolls topped to taste like everything from Almond Joy to banana pudding, but day after day, owners say it's the kolaches that keeps bringing customers back.
The small community north of Waco has several bakeries turning out thousands of kolaches each day.