Kalona Bakery owner makes pastries as community investment

KALONA — The smell of baked goods hangs like a cloud over the dark street outside the Kalona Bakery six nights a week.

Inside, the sweet smell morphs into a pungent, yeasty scent. The sound of classic rock from a stereo and heaps of baking pans being loaded into a dishwasher fill the air. Starting at 10 p.m., overnight staff work as fast as Keebler elves, flour dusting their shirts, pants and shoes while they package more than 200 doughnuts, along with dozens more cinnamon rolls, long johns, twists, doughnut holes and other pastries.

Melissa Vandenburg, the night baker, cuts cinnamon rolls off a long tube of rolled dough with a flick of her wrist. A 7-foot stack of baking sheets sits in a corner. Icing comes to a smooth finish on top of stacks of doughnuts cooling on racks.

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The staff will finish making hundreds of pastries, washing a mountain of pans and packaging products at midnight on a good night. Many will be shipped to Fareway stores in Iowa City and to customers who made special orders. The rest will be sold in the bakery in the morning.

At 3 a.m., Jon Troyer, owner of Kalona Bakery, will wake up and head over to the shop to begin making cakes, muffins, pies, cheesecakes, breads and more with a baker before the shop opens at 6 a.m. His wife, Stephanie, will handle sales and delivery.

This Friday will be Troyer's first National Doughnut Day as owner of a bakery of which one of its most famous products is doughnuts.

The Troyers took ownership of the bakery a year ago. The previous owners, the Benders of Kalona, had owned the shop for 35 years.

The Troyers didn't just buy a bakery. They bought the centerpiece of the town of about 2,500 people.

'The bakery is kind of the meeting point for Kalona,' Jon Troyer said. 'The families, when everyone gets into town, they come here for breakfast. Any gossip going around town, it's generally discussed here.'

Troyer grew up in Kalona and has worked in the restaurant business in the area since he was 16. He and other employees remember the bakery from their childhoods.

The Benders 'did a phenomenal job of embracing the community,' Troyer said. 'That's one thing we wanted to carry on.'

Troyer is well aware of the expectations he inherited.

In a town like Kalona, which he likens to television's Mayberry, the bakery is where locals host a prayer group, conduct a club gathering or hold a work meeting. It's also where regulars come in as early as 6 a.m. to have coffee and breakfast, to chat and watch TV until lunchtime, when they can order their second meal of the day from the lunch menu.

'If you can make somebody come in and make them feel at home ... that's the best,' Troyer said. 'People will come in, they'll grab a cup of coffee, go sit for an hour or two. At the end of it, they'll come up and be like, 'Oh, I owe you for a coffee.''

Troyer's goals in the first year of owning the business included volunteering, being a part of community fundraisers and listening to customers' desires.

And he listens to his customers well by going above expectations to serve their needs, said Gloria Hochstedler, branch manager at the Hills Bank and Trust in Kalona. Hochstedler often asks Troyer to cater her company's gatherings.

'He's open and available,' Hochstedler said. 'If you want to come out at 6 a.m., he's there.'

Kalona's fixation on the bakery has not waned in the year since the ownership change. Troyer didn't bring too much change too fast, Hochstedler said.

The biggest change came when he reverted the recipes back down to scratch, doing away with the mixes that had been used, even paying almost double for eggs to use only organic, cage free ones.

Changes were not always met without resistance. When the Troyers took ownership of the bakery, the entire night staff quit without notice, Troyer said.

'They just didn't want to go through the transition of new ownership,' he said. 'Slowly ... I was able to coax them into coming back. They were just so ingrained in what they were doing and their processes.'

Vandenburg has worked at the bakery for seven years.

'When I first got here, I had no clue,' she said. 'The most baking I did was a cake from a box.'

She now knows how long it takes for each batch of dough to rise, making adjustments in the summer when heat allows yeast to rise faster, making up to 15 batches of dough in one night.

If the machines that cut dough into classic circular doughnuts, long johns and bismarks break, the staff cuts the doughnuts by hand. After the dough rises, doughnuts are dropped into hot oil, then glossed with white icing. The cream and pudding-filled ones are piped full.

As for any health issues that may develop around the consumption of sugary pastries and desserts, Troyer said he doesn't have a problem. He got rid of any processed, chemical-laden ingredients that may have been used.

'Ninety percent of the food that I eat is here,' Troyer said. 'Things that I want to ut into my body are things I want to give to my customers.'

In addition to the original gluten-free monster cookies, customers now can purchase gluten-free muffins, cheesecake and cake. His next challenge is adding sugar-free items, inspired by family members who are diabetic.

Kalona Bakery sells about 500 doughnuts on a typical Friday. Troyer doesn't have an estimate for how many will be sold on National Doughnut Day, but he knows the community will turn out for the handmade doughnuts as it has for the last year.

'My wife and I prayed about coming down here,' Troyer said. 'We felt led to be here. As nervous as I was about things, I still have this calm peace that I'm meant to be here. The community is here to support me. We're not doing it alone.'