(Warning: Multiple baked goods were consumed during the production of this week’s look back at Chicago’s tasty history. By reading the following words you, too, might feel compelled to eat a donut, brownie, slice of coffee cake or toasted piece of bread.)
There are so many reasons to be nostalgic during the holiday season. One favorite — the sugary treats purchased from a neighborhood mom-and-pop bake shop. Maybe it was the gingerbread Santa Claus discovered in a stocking on Christmas Day. Or the decadent Yule log that capped off a delicious meal with family. Or the slices of cocktail rye bread that were artfully arranged near a relish tray at a festive party. These lovingly handmade edible creations couldn’t be purchased with the click of a button. There was a process. It was a whole thing. Remembering the experience now, maybe that’s why these items were so tasty — they weren’t just acquired, but were the reward for making the effort.
Early in the morning, you may have accompanied your mother, grandmother or aunt to her favorite pastry shop. When you opened the door, a tiny bell tinkled or jingled as the scent of freshly baked butter cookies tickled your nose and became implanted on your winter jacket, hat and gloves — a reminder the rest of the day of your journey to one of the sweetest places in the world.
After ripping a numbered, arrow-shaped pink piece of paper from a dispenser, your loved one jockeyed for position while awaiting their turn. Sure, she could have placed an order in advance, but half the fun of going to the bakery was in pointing and telling the smiling face behind a sparkling clean glass showcase that still smelled like Windex, “This one, please.”
The closing of a century-old family-owned confectionery last week — Vesecky’s in Berwyn — is a reminder that this traditional business is a laborious one. It requires hard work, long hours and missing out on your own get-togethers in order to provide memorable desserts for other people’s celebrations.
I asked Jennifer Billock, author of “Historic Chicago Bakeries,” why so many of these beloved local establishments are closing.
“It’s a couple things,” she said. “Ingredient prices have gone up with inflation, while available income for people has gone down, so we can’t all afford scratch-made bakery treats right now. Plus, rents are increasing and pushing out longtime businesses who can no longer afford it. And maybe the saddest reason is that the children in these families don’t necessarily want to take over the business. Baking is a rewarding but difficult life, and not everyone wants to get up at 3 a.m. for work!”
When these beloved bakeries shutter, it’s difficult to find another place that serves the same delectables. But Billock, who has a new side hustle in which she reads cheese like tarot cards (really!), has a solution — bake your own version of a holiday favorite.
“Find some of the bakers and talk to them! I’ve found many of them are happy to share recipes once the bakery has closed. There are also a few recipes in my book that people could use. Or you can try to replicate it in your home kitchen! When Wolf’s Bakery was figuring out how to make a replica of the Dressel’s cake, they did a TON of trial and error. Get your friends and family to taste test and let you know how close you are to what you are trying to recreate,” she said.
We’ll eat a kolachy to that idea!
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Opened in 1922 and owned by three generations, Dinkel’s Bakery closed at the end of April 2022. The property at 3329 N. Lincoln Ave. in Lakeview was sold to Senco Properties.
It was the end to an epic immigrant family’s era of loves and losses that spanned more than a century.
The bakery was known for “Dinkel’s World Famous Stollen” — a golden mosaic of fruited bread — cakes, pies, doughnuts, strudels and other items.
“My grandfather, Joseph Dinkel, came over from Germany in 1905 or so,” Norm Dinkel said. “How did he end up in Chicago? I don’t know. But he came over as a certified master baker.”
Norm Dinkel retains the business and all the family recipes.
The bakery’s iconic neon sign sold for $6,000 during a June 3, 2022, auction to an unknown buyer.
Dressel’s Bakery (Several locations)
The Dressel name was synonymous around Chicago with “chocolate whipped cream” — its legendary fudge cake.
The family left Germany in the early 1900s. In 1913, brothers Joseph and Bill founded a bake shop at 3254 S. Wallace St. in Chicago. Ten years later, Herman Dressel — just 14 years old at the time — joined his older brothers.
The bakery became a neighborhood institution at its original location, another one in Cicero, and eventually a large manufacturing facility at 66th Street and Ashland Avenue in Chicago.
“In the original stores, you’d come in and smell all the wonderful bakery items,” Dan Dressel, Herman Dressel’s son, told the Tribune in 2010.
In 1963, American Bakeries took over. The two older Dressel brothers retired, but Herman Dressel stayed on. The new owners wanted to take the bake shop’s local popularity and make it national. Soon after, Dressel’s cakes began appearing in red and white boxes at major grocery stores across the country. Although Herman Dressel had only two years of high school education, he played a key role in creating recipes for whipped cream frosting that could freeze well, and jellies that could write “Happy Birthday” smoothly, his son said.
American Bakeries sold the company to Pain Jacquet, a French company, in 1987. Over the next several years, the business incurred insurmountable debt and went bankrupt in 1995.
Herman Dressel was never told about his beloved company’s demise before he died in 1997.
Want to replicate Dressel’s chocolate fudge whipped cream cake? This recipe was adapted by Monica Kass Rogers in the Tribune’s test kitchen in 2012.
Fingerhut Bakery (Several locations)
Seven generations of Fingerhut bakers provided Chicago-area residents with a taste of home from 1895 until early 2000 (though two locations in northwest Indiana remain open).
In 1894, Frank Naprstek, a Czechoslovakian tailor and baker, gathered his family and set out for Chicago. Naprstek (which means “thimble” in Czech and was changed in the U.S. to “finger hut” — a thimble for tailors) saved some space in steamer trunks for his favorite recipes, including his grandmother’s rye bread nicknamed “Babi.” According to his great-grandson Herbert Fingerhut, the bread charted a new destiny.
Frank Naprstek swapped his sewing machines for ovens and a life of rye the following year.
The Cicero location at 5537 W. Cermak Road served about 250 kinds of baked goods each day. Houska (a traditional bread) and flaky, buttery kolachys were favorites. But fruit streusels, rugalah (butter and cream cheese pastries filled with apricot preserves and walnuts), kugelhopf (a butter and sour cream cake baked in a fluted mold), poppy seed rings and babovka (yeast dough filled with poppy seeds or almonds, baked in a Bundt pan then iced) also had their fans.
Gladstone Park Bakery (Jefferson Park)
Though the small shop at 5744 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Jefferson Park had been in operation since the early 1930s, its popularity soared in the late 1960s and 1970s for its dramatic, custom-made cakes. On an average weekend back then, more than 400 cakes — decorated to look like animals, clowns, musical instruments, floral scenes and more — were picked up by eager partygoers. The number increased to 600 during May and June for wedding- and graduation-party orders.
“There really isn’t anything we can’t make in the form of a cake, as long as it’s not too tall,” former owner Dean Hedeker told the Tribune in 1976. “Why, last week we created a tennis racket for 60 people.”
Its client list included some prominent names, too. Mayor Richard M. Daley’s family ordered a cake from Gladstone Park for a bon-voyage party. When Wrigley Field celebrated Ernie Banks Day, the bakery provided a 6-foot cake decorated with a bat and ball.
Others — including Zsa Zsa Gabor — enjoyed a taste of the bakery’s Hungarian apple strudel or its babka (a sweet braided bread) while in town.
The bakery’s chocolate-dipped cheesecake, strawberry tarts and German chocolate cake were sold at Taste of Chicago in the late 1980s.
Operations moved to Elk Grove Village in the 2000s, according to the Daily Herald, and focused on wholesale orders. Gladstone shut its doors in February 2022. Owner Joseph LoChirco blamed the coronavirus pandemic and rising costs for the closure, he told WMAQ-Ch. 5.
New Paradise Bakery, an Italian-style pastry and gelato shop, now occupies the storefront on Milwaukee Avenue.
Ingram’s Busy Bee Bakery (Downers Grove)
The old-fashioned bakery at 5126 Main St. in Downers Grove attracted admirers, even some famous ones, for its sticky buns, coffee cakes and butter cookies.
Comedian Emo Philips visited the shop in 1985.
“Emo was in here before Thanksgiving, goofing around with the girls and having pictures taken,” Ann Ingram, former owner of the bakery, told the Tribune at the time.
Chuck Kalousek bought the store in the late 1990s, manning the ovens and mixing bowls there from midnight to morning so his customers could start their days with fresh breads and pastries.
When he was hospitalized with COVID-19 in March 2021, friends stepped up to take care of his business and his family.
“When you carve a place out in a community, when you become a strand in the fabric of family traditions, you become something bigger, regardless of your own humility,” Tribune columnist Rex Huppke wrote. “People take notice. And when something goes wrong, they respond.”
Money poured into a GoFundMe to help them, and prayers and kind thoughts and messages of strength flowed from throughout the Chicago area and from across the country.
After a long hospitalization, however, Kalousek died on June 23, 2021, at age 55. The bakery remains closed. As a final example of his kindness, he was an organ donor through the Gift Of Hope Organ & Tissue Donor Network. Kalousek’s wife, Katie, told Huppke his liver and two kidneys were donated.
“There’s a possibility he could’ve helped to save three lives,” she said. “In life he was a giver, and even upon his death he continued to give.”
Naples Bakery (Evergreen Park)
Delicate shell-shaped sfogliatella, gooey pecan turtle cookies, elaborate multi-tiered wedding cakes — just a few of the delicacies that set Naples Bakery apart from the others that lined the south side of 95th Street, between California and Central.
Alphonso Lauro opened his first shop in 1918 near 67th and Wood on Chicago’s South Side. A few years later, he built a larger bakery at 69th and Paulina Streets and expanded the operation into a wholesale bread business.
Alphonso and Maria Lauro’s son, Joseph, began in the family business as a delivery truck driver and then took over when he was 20, after four years’ service as a baker in the Navy during World War II.
Joseph Lauro and his wife, Marilyn, opened the 95th Street store in June 1963.
Angelettes, macaroons, amaretti, as well as cannoli and nunachelli, helped make Naples a destination bakery.
When you pair the finest ingredients with age-old Italian methods that have been passed down through generations, Marilyn Lauro told the Tribune, “You have a recipe for success.”
After 97 years in business and four generations of ownership, Naples Bakery closed at the end of 2016.
Swedish Bakery (Andersonville)
When the Andersonville bakery at 5348 N. Clark St. closed after 88 years in business, its most popular items were the classic green marzipan princess torte, chocolate ganache cake and whipped cream cake with fruit.
But when the bakery first opened in the late 1920s, it was probably sweet rolls and bread, operations owner Dennis Stanton said, specifically the Swedish rye known as limpa.
Stanton’s mother, Marlies, and late father, George, bought the bakery then known as Bjuhr’s in 1979. The family is not Swedish, but took over from a Swedish family. Marlies was born in Germany, growing up in Düsseldorf in her parents’ pastry shop. “I did my apprenticeship first in a store as a saleslady, then as a pastry cook,” she said. When asked her childhood bakery favorite, “I like sweet stuff, but I like sausage better,” she said, laughing.
One hundred people were standing in line the morning of Fat Tuesday in 2017 — the bakery’s final day — when the doors opened at 6:30 a.m.
Just inside the side kitchen door, Stanton surveyed the hustle of staff and visitors. “I got here at 4 a.m. simply because I had two news crews already that time of the morning.” How was he feeling? “Just a need to get this day over with, at this point,” he said, “And do it the best we can and make everybody happy.”
Stanton said the bakery considered selling its recipes.
“But the food scene in Chicago is competitive,” Stanton added, “People are not interested in history. They’re interested in making their own history, and that’s understandable.”
Tuzik’s 95th Street Bakery (Oak Lawn)
“I guess baking was in my blood,” Ted Tuzik told the Tribune in 1993.
He was the third generation of his family to own and operate the bakery, which was started on the Southwest Side in 1931 by his grandparents who emigrated from Poland. The storefront was located at 53rd Street and Kedzie Avenue for decades.
Tuzik moved the bakery to its Oak Lawn location in 1981 with his business partner and brother-in-law Bill Love.
Each morning, they baked holska (an ethnic sweet bread with raisins), pizza coffee cakes (segmented to include cheese and up to four additional fruit fillings), muffins, pies and more for early-bird commuters. A 12-inch Atomic Cake — a South Side tradition — could be ordered for special occasions and paczki was served hot with a variety of fillings on Fat Tuesday.
Tuzik died unexpectedly on Halloween in 2019. He was 68 years old.
His family chose to close the bakery because Tuzik was considered irreplaceable and they did not want to continue without him at the helm. They had been contemplating retirement before his passing.
“Our time has come to an end,” they wrote on the bakery’s Facebook page. “But we will cherish these beautiful memories forever.”
Vienna Pastry Shop (Portage Park)
Second-generation baker Gerhard Kaes moved his pastry business from Austria to the United States in 1964. His shop at 5411 W. Addison St., served fresh tortes, flaky strudel and bismarcks filled with fresh strawberries.
The classics — Sacher (chocolate cake) torte and Dobos (sponge cake with layers of chocolate buttercream) torte — were there along with such fun-to-say creations as schnecken (sweet roll). The word means snail, and that’s the shape of these sweets, which are made of pastry dough rolled up with cherry or apple filling, cinnamon and nuts.
Kaes’ son, Johann, went to business school at Loyola University in Chicago but then received his baking certificates at the Culinary Institute of America.
“He had been working for Handy Andy, and one day he came here and said, ‘Hey, dad, what about me coming back to the bakery,'” Kaes said. “He was really brought up to take it over.”
Sadly, Johann Kaes died in an automobile accident in Lake County in 1999. He was 31 years old.
“You never really expect this,” said his sister Gabriella. “I expected to have him forever.”
Gerhard Kaes continued to operate the baked goods business until 2004. He died in 2021.
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