Texas’ first Czech bakery, a kolache stop for 70 years, to reopen in McLennan County

The Village Bakery in West, Texas’ first Czech bakery and the home of the state’s original kolaches, has been sold and will reopen, the new owner said Wednesday.

Shelly Miller, owner of the Village Shoppe next door to the bakery at 113 E. Oak St. in the McLennan County town, bought the 75-year-old bake shop.

The Village Bakery has been closed five years since owner Mimi Montgomery Irwin died 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 W.O. Montgomery was quoted as saying, “I am the kolache king. The other bakeries in town — well, they 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 convenience store 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 remodeling but will reopen with the Village Bakery’s original recipes, she said.