CZECH BAKER MN

Today I'm talking with Michaela at CZECH BAKER MN. You can also follow on Facebook.

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00:00
You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org. Today I'm talking with Michaela  at Czech Baker, Minnesota.

00:29
in Savage, Minnesota. Good afternoon, Michaela. How are you? I am good. How are you today?  I'm good. Sorry about the technical difficulties logging in.  I'm going to be emailing Riverside tomorrow and being like,  what is up guys? Cause it's not working very well for my guests.  No problem. We figured it out. So we're good.  Yes. So my

00:51
I usually I say how's the weather, but I'm in Minnesota too. So we know the weather has been kind of rainy, kind of sunny, kind of cloudy, and we never know what we're going to  get. So,  Okay. So you are a Czech baker and I need you to tell me how you pronounce K O L A C  H  Y or E or whatever it is. So Koláč would be a traditional size that we have in Czech Republic. And that would be one item, just one.

01:20
Kolache would be multiple. And then here in Minnesota, they do use Kolache keys. So they add the S at the end to make it multiple. But if you say Kolache key, that would be multiple already. And single would be Kolache. And that is just a smaller version  from the regular Kolache word. Okay. And that particular pastry we're talking about is the one that...

01:46
that's flat on the bottom, but the corners are folded in and it has like a jam or jelly in the middle. Is that right?  You know, we're going to be  hearing a lot of people about this because I was born and raised in the Czech Republic.  Koláč comes from words, kolá, which means round. So  in Czech Republic, if you ask for koláč, you're going to get a round circle item with the filling on the top and open face. And that's the ones I make. And then the ones here in Minnesota,  they do

02:16
put in the two corners or sometimes they just do two of the sides, kind of wrap them over and kind of hide the filling a little bit. So we make those in Europe as well. We don't call them kolache. We have different names on a different presentations. It's the same dough, same filling, just a different presentation and gives you a different name. But in Czech Republic, if you ask for kolache, you're going to get a round thing with open face. Okay.

02:41
See, this is why I love talking to you people on the podcast because I learned things I didn't know. My husband and I were at a friend's house last year or the year before and the male of the couple was telling me that it's Kalachi and I've heard it called Kalaki, like Kalaki days in I think Montgomery. Kalachi days in Montgomery, yeah. Yeah, and for the longest time, I'm like number one, I don't know how to pronounce it correctly.

03:10
And number two, I don't care, they're yummy. arose by any other name would smell as sweet. And I suppose that whatever this pastry we're discussing is called, it tastes just as good. Yep, I would think so. mean, know, different names, but different views or different looks, but the same dough, same kind of filling, of course, depends, you know, if you get it from commercial store, if you made it from homemade, but yeah, whatever they're called, they are delicious. You're right.

03:39
Uh huh. love the pastry dough. is so good. And I'm not even a bread girl. Like I don't love bread, but these things are amazing. Okay. Thank you for sort of straightening that out for me because I figured you would know the correct answer. And where in Czech Republic are you from? I was born and raised in Ostrava, which is the East North side. I lived about, I don't know, have 20, 30 minutes to Poland and then about

04:08
30 to 45 minutes to Slovakia. So we're kind of up in that corner and all of those three cultures kind of, know, interlope in there for us as far as food goes. So we'll get a little bit of everything. And when did you come to America? I have been here since 1998. Oh,  wow. OK. So how old were you when you came over? I was 19. So I've been here longer than my original start of life in Czech Republic.

04:36
Was that hard for you? mean, this is not a geography podcast, but was that hard for you? Was it a real culture shock?  Not at  all. mean, you I grew up  with one brother and a mom, kind of. She was married for a while, but we never really kind of had a stable  father figure in our lives. And  I don't know. I was just always advantageous. You know, I wanted to do different things.  Right after high school, I went to England as an au pair.

05:04
for a year and then I went to Italy for summer job and I stayed for like a year and a half and that's where I met my ex-husband and that's how I got to the States because of him at the end. But I have not, I mean I love travel. I have been to many, many different countries and I hope that I'll have many more to see. Okay, cool. So tell me how you became a cottage food producer because you make a lot of things out of a small kitchen, I would assume.

05:34
Yeah, so that happened back in 2014 when I got married with my second husband who is actually from Montgomery grew up there and is a fifth generation of the Czech heritage here. We kind of joked around and I said, well, why don't we move to Czech Republic? And he was like, well, yeah, let's do it. Where are we going? I was like, well, wow, hold on. Like, we need to plan it. You know, I have two kids and

06:00
little kids obviously so school and language and house and all that stuff and he was ready to retire so we decided that we're gonna have a year  kind of get it all together and figure out what we're gonna do and we're gonna move to Czech Republic for two years  and we did that we actually stayed for three and then  upon our return back I mean after my three years being back home and eating all the

06:23
proper food and good bread and good kolache and you know, tasty  baked goods, not just sugar filled stuff.  I was like, well, I got to start doing it at home. So I actually started with the sourdough bread, the caraway rye was the first thing that I started doing and I brought it to Sokol  in St. Paul. We have a Czech and Slovak Sokol Hall. So we were meeting there with parents and kids for dancing lessons and Czech and Slovak lessons. So would bring it there. So that would be kind of like my first customers.

06:52
once a week when I brought the kids over there and then I started thinking that, you know, I should make kolacha and make them the right way,  not the  Montgomery way.  So I did. And then I got very lucky of going to a farmer's market that was in Prylake. It was called the Little Market That Could. And it was towards the end of the season. I mean, I think there were like two or three weeks left. It was early September.  And the organizer,  Lady Rosemary,

07:19
Was like yeah, of course come we don't have a fresh Baker and yes, you need to come here So I did it for like the first  for the last two or three weeks of the market  and I kind of got hooked and got some customers and it's been now it's  Is seven years six or seven years that I'm doing it. So Wow fun fun  So who taught you to bake did you just learn on your own or did someone teach you?

07:46
It would be my grandmother. My grandma was the one who was doing all this stuff, you know, baking and cooking. mean, my mom, growing up in Europe, actually, everybody cooks at home.  Difference there is that some people enjoy it and some people just do it because they have to, you know, we didn't have all that, all those restaurants and stuff. mean, everything we cooked was from scratch and we would eat, you know, at home all the time. There was no really restaurants eating unless it was a big celebration or some kind of special occasion.

08:15
So cooking more or less, you my mother used to do that. She didn't bake too much because like I said, she did it because it was needed to feed the family, but she didn't really enjoy it. Well, my grandma, she just loved anything in the kitchen. So when I was little,  I spent as much time as I could with her and try to learn stuff from her. Very nice. I kind of wish my grandmas were still around. I'm 55. So my grandmas have both been gone for  quite a while.

08:43
I think my mom's mom passed away over 10 years ago.  Yes, I don't have my mom nor my grandmother anymore either. So I do have still and  who is left in Czech Republic and she enjoys the baking  as much as my grandmother did. So she got that from her rather than my mom, guess.  Uh huh. Yeah.  I have been learning sourdough lately. Sourdough bread  made my first loaf this weekend and it was, it was dense.

09:12
It was dense  and it turned out that it tastes really good, but it's got like a bagel  mouthfeel to it. You know, when you buy bagel  and I kind of love my mistake.  It, I had cream cheese on it today. I was like, this is like a bagel. I'm okay with this.  Right. You like the chewiness of it. Yeah.  Yeah. It's probably under proof. That's why it's kind of chewy. Uh, so it didn't prove all the way, but.

09:37
For me, like I said, actually started with the bread here first and that was easier for me because the sourdough is forgiving. You don't have to watch the clock and stuff. then once I started using the yeast dough, which is for my kolache, I was kind of having problems first because it's completely different. You do have to watch it, then you have to be on the top of it. So for me trying to figure out the schedule and how it works. And although I've been doing it for, like I said, six or seven years,

10:04
I will not bake anything out of dry yeast. That just never works for me. I actually buy fresh yeast each time and that works perfect for me. But dry yeast, I mean, I have used it a couple of times in a pinch that I couldn't get the fresh one, but it was not good. I was not happy with the result. So I'm not sure what that is, but in Czech Republic, we would always use dry, sorry, fresh yeast when I was growing up. So I think that's kind of stuck with me that that's a better way to go.

10:32
Okay. I have never seen fresh yeast, but I've read about it. it like a, is it like a little chunk of yeast or is it, how does it come? Yeah, I actually buy it as a one pound brick. We have a Hy-Vee here that has a bakery that they bake fresh every day. So they sell me the one pound. You can buy them in a little smaller, like a cube. Sometimes I've seen them at London Birely's I think, but

10:57
That one small cube is only like 45 or 50 grams and I'm not sure how many that is in ounces, I'm sorry. But that one cost like three or four dollars and the one pound I buy at Hy-Vee cost me five bucks. So. Okay. So what's the texture of it? Is it like clay-ish or is it? Kind of, yeah. It's kind of like clay-ish, like a plasturine, modeling. So do you just like scrape a spoon into it to get what you need or how do you use it?

11:26
Well, because I bake in a big batches, obviously, since I bake for the farmers market, you know, I weigh it. I just I usually use about third of that brick. So I, you know, take off whatever I need, obviously, wait, make sure I have enough and then I just  scramble it with my hands into warm milk with sugar already. And then the same process like with the dry yeast, you let it, you know, sit for a little bit so it starts blooming. But it works way faster than the dry yeast. So

11:52
Okay, I had no idea.  again, this is why I love you guys. I learned so many things I had no idea about.  My husband is the yeast bread baker. I kill every yeast dough I deal with. I gave up. He's so good at it. I'm like, you do it.  And then I had a friend bring me some sourdough starter a couple weeks ago and I killed that too. Didn't feed it for three days and I was like,

12:16
It's not good. Forget it. Oh, didn't tell it. The sourdough were last.  I brought mine actually dried up from Czech Republic. I bake once a week.  during the season, during the summer markets, but in the wintertime, I don't necessarily bake at all or for a month or two at a time.  And if as long as you keep it in a fridge, you can always revive it afterwards. It might take a little bit longer, but  it works. well, I have two starters. I have the white regular flour and then I have the rye.

12:45
And the rye one is much easier to keep track of or take it easier to keep it going because the rye flour just has a little more power, I think, for the sourness.  The second part of my story is I also broke the jar that the sourdough starter was in. So  it went in the trash and then I started over. I started my own  and it worked. And that's when I made the loaf out of this weekend.  And so my sourdough, I have two now.

13:14
I have two starters going because this is a thing. It's like chicken math and it's sourdough math.  And  I want to make two loaves of bread every Sunday now because number one, salt, flour and water only. That's it. That's what makes it. And it's inexpensive and it tastes really good. Who knew? Yeah, there's nothing better than home baked bread. And you know, while there is different

13:40
ways you can make it and use it. Being it yeast bread or sourdough bread, there are just very simple recipes as well. Just like you said, three ingredients, know, give it some time, fold it over once or twice, plop it on a baking sheet and it will be, it might not look pretty, but it will be good. It will be edible. And even if you under proof it, it might turn out like a bagel and I don't make bagels. So I was very happy to have bagel bread this morning. It worked out great.

14:09
So we've talked about Kalatchee's, however you say it, I'm never gonna say it right,  and sourdough bread, but what else do you make?  The other thing I make is vanocka, which is  some American  Czechs  know it as hovska, but it's basically a braided bread, kind of like  a  shala, challa bread. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right. I think it's challa, yep.

14:35
Yeah, it's that I mean, I use exactly the same dough as I use for collages. So it's just slightly sweet.  My customers actually compare it to brioche bread because of the sweetness a little bit. So  that's another one. And then I make bubla nina, which is a traditional Czech cake that's just poured in a baking pan and you know, baked as a as one whole thing and then you slice it as in little things. It's basically a coffee cake  with fruit.

15:03
on the top of a different types of fruits. But  for that one, I actually use a Czech flower.  We have  three different types of flower in Czech Republic for the white one. And  this one you can't find here in America. So I actually buy it in Chicago when I go usually once or twice a year and I bring home like 200 pounds of the Czech flower. And then I use it throughout the year. But  the fun thing I always see is like, you know, comparing the ingredients of the Czech flower.

15:33
you look at it and it says wheat, that's all there is. And then when I look in the American one, know, I, unfortunately I do not buy organic because  I couldn't make it financially for business that way. But I do buy the  unbleached and unbromated  from Sam's Club. So I'm trying to do, you know, at least something good in there. But still, if you look at those ingredients, it definitely does not say just one word. So.  Yeah, we Americans have a...

16:01
crazy need to overcomplicate everything, including ingredients. Yep.  It's sad.  my podcast is about homesteading and cottage food producing and people who make things, so crafters.  And  we walk the walk and talk here. We have a big old garden and we grow a lot of our own food in that garden and we also sell it to people.  when you get buttercarnes lettuce out of my garden,

16:30
That's exactly what you're getting.  It has no pesticides, no herbicides.  And if it has manure, it's chicken manure from our chickens in the dirt.  And it's, want people to know that it doesn't have to be complicated. Like flour should say wheat.  So I don't know why, I don't know why we all go so far out of our way to make things so difficult for ourselves.

17:00
Yeah, well, I think it's the,  especially for the flower, I think it's the stability, know, shelf stable for who knows how long. Cause when you do, and I actually did look into trying to do my own  flower milling, you know,  but  I use,  I don't know about 100, 150 pounds of flour a month. And that's just not doable unless I would have a commercial miller,  you know, which there is no room for that in my house anymore. So.  Yeah, exactly.

17:29
So tell me, you go to a bunch of different farmers markets, yes? I actually do just the one now, Chanhassen. I do different events that I see throughout the year. I try to stay kind of with the main events kind of thing that I can get into. But then I have done a couple different ones, like in Shakopee there were a couple, there was like a food truck event and then they do ales in the alley.

17:57
which is like a couple open breweries on the  downtown there and then they have music and vendors and stuff. So I've done that for the third time this year. But the farmers markets only one on Saturday at Chanhassen 921 and that's strictly because I have a full-time job. This is my fun job. Okay. Yeah.  You have a jobby job and then you have your favorite job. Yep. I have a job I have to pay for health insurance with. That's correct.  Uh huh. Yeah. I know. I get it.  Um,

18:26
So the reason I asked about the farmers markets is because  clearly you have an accent. It is absolutely beautiful.  And you're making foods that have different names than most Americans have ever seen. So do you get like questions when people interact with you about where are you from and what is this  and  what's it like for,  how does it compare to an American dessert? Yeah. So most of the time I would say probably 90, 95%.

18:53
is people who actually know Kolache or who has actually followed me on Facebook and they come really specific for that so they know what it is. There's few others there are like you know kids who walk by and see my display and they go oh donuts and I go yeah donuts and then you know off and on there's a couple of people who will like ask what it is so obviously I can explain it and then you know just

19:17
tell them what the flavor is and what the  reason of it is because I was born there. Obviously, like you said, as soon as I start talking, you can tell that  I'm not from the US. So  yes,  but honestly, I listen to accents all day long every day because of the podcast.  Your accent is so pretty and  you are very, very understandable. You know, it's not like it's in the way of my understanding what you're saying.

19:46
Yeah, and I guess I would agree with you on that. I do work with calling insurance companies and I deal obviously with lots of different people and their accents sometimes are very horrible. But it's just a personal thing. mean, I have spoken or learned English since probably my fifth grade and then I also had German. I lived in Italy, so was able to communicate there as well. So it's kind of just, know, some people have the head.

20:14
hard for languages and some just don't. So  yeah, I do not. I took, I took two years of French in high school  and to this day I can still sort of read French as long as it's words on paper. I can't speak French to save my life. Even after having an excellent teacher who I adored  and she required us all to start speaking French from the get go. Like she gave us a couple of phrases that were common  and

20:43
made us use them in class from the first day of class.  I don't even remember what they were at this point.  I also took a year with Spanish because we had to take a different language in high school for three years out of the four.  So I was like, okay, well, I took French. Spanish isn't that much different. I'm going to take Spanish one this year. And it's very confusing because Spanish and French are alike, but they're also very different.

21:09
And I would start saying things in French instead of Spanish and my Spanish teacher would be like,  Mary Evelyn, this is not French class, this is Spanish class. I'm like, I know, but I just got done with two years of French.  And she and my French teacher would like giggle because they'd get together and they'd see me in the hallway and  they'd say things that I could understand then in French and in Spanish, kind of teasing me about the fact that I would speak French in the Spanish class.

21:38
Yeah, I mean, I was more required in here to do, you know, another one.  I mean, Spanish, I know that it's  you know, optional, more or less, I guess, or  if somebody does it, there's a requirement maybe for one or two years or something. But,  you know, I don't know. I've traveled all around the world and while English has been really good and most of the people speak them or most of the countries you can get around, it's always much nicer and you always looked at

22:06
very differently if you know just a couple of basic language, basic sentences, even if you just try to, you know, say, hey, thanks to you, how are you, you know, how can I get there or just again, basic sentences and local people will just look at you completely different. Yeah, I feel like I'm going to get myself in trouble if I say this wrong. I feel like if you are in a different country with a different language and you can, you know,

22:35
communicate in the language of the country.  Even on basic level, it means that you're trying. You're trying to make them comfortable as well as making you comfortable.  I'm going to fail. If I ever go to France or Spain, I'm going to fail that test because I don't remember any of it.  But  my son actually took a year of Latin in high school  and he was doing online school. So that was even more interesting.

23:05
And he needed help with the conjugation part.  Oh my God, Michaela.  I spent a month learning about Latin verbs and nouns and how it's built. And I was like,  I don't really want to do this. This is not, this is hard. This is really hard.  I think he got a C in the class.  I probably would have gotten an F  and learned a lot about

23:33
the fact that a lot of English words have Latin roots, which I already knew, but now I really know it. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. That would be probably the hardest language for me, I think, because it doesn't really flow at all.  No, it's very flat. Yeah.  He had to actually record himself saying some of the words and  the stress on  the first  syllable tends to be just flat.

24:01
there's barely any up and down in how it's spoken. when you listen to Latin, you know, in the Catholic Church, it always sounds like, I don't know, like mumbling because there's no inflection at all. So yeah, not only was it difficult to learn, but it was really boring as a listener to listen to. And I love music. So for me, I was like, oh my God, I'm going to be asleep in five minutes if I have to listen to any more of this.

24:31
So yeah, languages are,  some of them are beautiful. Some of them are boring as all hell.  So anyway, not a language podcast. It's a cooking podcast, homesteading podcast. I love that you have brought the traditions of your baking from the Czech Republic. I think that is amazing.

24:56
Yeah, mean, we're trying, like, you know, once you move somewhere, when I originally got here when I was 19, I was like, oh, I couldn't care less for any Czech food. I wanted to try everything American. So, you know, at that point I was on, yeah, hamburger helper, Kraft and mac and cheese. Yes, all the fast foods I could have, you know. And then I was pregnant and I had my child. And at that point, I realized that it's all junk. And I just tried to.

25:24
go back to my roots and try to do the cooking from scratch and everything.

25:31
Good job, mama. I'm impressed. Good. I'm glad. Yeah. Do your kids, this is going to be a weird question because I haven't talked to anybody like you ever on the podcast. Do your kids love the cooking from scratch with the traditional foods? They enjoy the food. There's really not much that they don't like. There might be a couple of things like liver.

25:57
When they were little, they would still eat it because they knew they had to. Now, obviously, they would be like they're 16 and 19. So now it'd be like, yeah, I'm not going to eat that anymore. But, you know, that's just one kind of funky thing, of course. But yeah, they really and Viv has living there for three years.  They were going to school and  lunch is the main dish  that you would have every day.  And they were getting it at school and it was always cooked from scratch there. And it would include, you know, soup.

26:23
full meal  and then usually some kind of either salad or dessert kind of something sweet. So they have had everything and anything that I grew up on  and they really enjoy it. Making them cook it at home,  that's another story. My son is more of the cooker kind of adventurer, but some of this stuff takes really long time.  There's like different sauces and baked goods and stuff, not baked goods, but sorry.  Meat, that's been...

26:52
roasted in the oven with vegetables and stuff and takes a long time and  making dumplings from scratch, you know, it's not a quick,  quick food to be done. So he,  don't believe that he would be able to cook anything traditional Czech.  But  my daughter, the other hand, she will eat anything as well, but no, she's not into cooking at all. I love that your son is into it though. My son loves to cook too. He just made  some,  some battered fried.

27:21
uh, chicken tonight for dinner.  I don't, I don't make it. don't like frying in hot fat. It scares me. And when he puts, when he puts the chicken in the hot fat, makes that sizzling noise and it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I hate it.  And he said, are you going to have any of this? It was chicken thigh meat and I don't love chicken thighs. And I was like, nope, spice it up the way you want to. That's the best part. There's the thighs.  I am not into chicken right now.

27:49
I had chicken the other day and I was like, nope, I don't want chicken again for six months. I'm good. But he's really good at cooking. And part of it is that when he was little, I invited him to cook with me. And clearly I make American food from scratch. so lots of soups and stews and steak and, and chicken. God, I'm so sick of chicken and, and cookies. He would help me make cookies.

28:16
and that's probably his favorite memory from when he was learning is making chocolate chip cookies. He still likes to make them. So cooking is not just a girl thing, it is a human person thing.  I'm glad that he loves to do it.  Okay, I don't think I have any more questions, but Michaela,  thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me  and where can people find you?

28:41
Well, the Facebook site is probably the easiest to see where I'm going to be.  That's the most,  well, that's really the only thing that I kind of use for keeping in touch with people and it's the Czech Baker MN.  I am located in Savage. I do bake from the house, so don't have, you know, I don't bake every day. I don't have a storefront.  The best other way of contacting me is probably either emailing the CzechBaker at gmail.com or to texting me.

29:10
at my phone number that you can find on my Facebook site.  Or  if you're already a customer, obviously it's on all my products as well, so you can find it on the  label. Awesome, fantastic.  One more question.  Are you a member of the Cottage Foodie website?  Cottage Foodie, you mean on Facebook?  No, it's actually a website.

29:36
Matt Rosen started a directory. no, okay, Matt Rosen. I know that name. He does the cookies, right? He's the surgeon cookie master or something. Yes, yes. He has a website now that's a directory for bakers, food bakers.  I saw when he was trying to put it together, I think.  I saw that online somewhere and then I kind of lost track of it. So no, I am not there, but I might have to do it again. I will message you the link when I...

30:05
tomorrow morning so that you have it. But yeah, he's doing it and it's  starting to pick up some traction and I  think he's going to have an actual  conference next spring. Oh really? Oh, that's pretty cool. In Minnesota. I keep meaning to mention this and I keep forgetting. So was like, this is the perfect time. Bring up Matt in the cottagefoodie.com. think it is. So.  Okay, yeah, definitely. I will look into that again.  Yeah, definitely. Because that way more people can find you.

30:35
All right. So as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. And Michaela, again, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you for reaching out, Mary. Have a great day. You too. Have a good night. All right. Bye. Bye.