Have you heard of Boerne’s best-kept secret? Penguin Suits is ready to spill the tea and dish out our favorite breakfast spot in all of the Texas Hill Country. Just off River Road sits Little Gretel, a culturally rich Czech eatery that features by far the best Kolaches from Denise’s Love Kolaches! In search of delectable pastries for an upcoming birthday, our team stumbled upon Little Gretel and Love Kolaches and hello, here we have our go-to morning pit-stop.

Let us not forget to mention that not only are these satiating kolaches delicious, they are beautifully made to be presented at any event. Each morning Denise Mazal at Little Gretel makes by hand, fresh, buttery and authentic Czech kolaches that include both the traditional fruit and Texas variation of sausage kolaches to order. You can find five fabulous flavors when you visit Little Gretel; peach and cheese, plum, poppy seed, sausage, and jalapeno sausage.

The butter and savory bread mixed with the sweet indulgence of the fruit is truly a tantalizing combination on the tongue. Debi’s personal favorite is the peach and cheese kolache; she says the two flavors marry together so well. The poppy has a unique and delightful flavor, while the plum offers a decadent sweet treat. If you find yourself in the mood for something a little more piquant, we suggest going after the filling jalapeno sausage kolache that has the perfect amount of kick. Honestly, do yourself a favor and pick up some of these incredible pastries – the Peeps at Penguin Suits gives them a 10/10 recommendation.  Don’t leave Boerne without Loves Kolaches.

Loves Kolaches is located inside Little Gretel’s, the can be ordered at the door or online.

http://www.lovekolaches.com/ 518 River Rd, Boerne, TX 78006, (830) 331-1368

The billboard rises above State Highway 71 outside of Ellinger, reminding drivers they can stop at Weikel’s Bakery, some 10 minutes farther west in La Grange, to buy kolache. The billboard is little different from thousands of others advertising roadside stops in Texas, save for one thing. The Weikel’s billboard almost towers over Hruska’s Store & Bakery on Highway 71. Hruska’s sells kolache, too, that are equally as famous as Weikel’s.

Think barbecue is taken seriously in Texas? Wait until you hear about kolache.

“Kolache is a symbol,” says Denise Mazel, a Czech native and chef who owns the Little Gretel restaurant in Boerne. “Kolache is a small pastry, but to every Czech, it represents family. So everyone is going to say their kolache is the best and their recipe is the best.”

Kolache, plural for the Czech word kolach, are one part sweet roll and one part tradition, and have been a Central Texas staple since Czech-speaking immigrants brought them with them in the 19th century. They might not be as famous statewide as barbecue or chili, but partisans are just as loyal, just as opinionated and just as ferocious in their sympathies. Want to start an argument in Hallettsville, home to the annual Kolache Fest each fall? Say something nice about kolache from West or Ellinger or La Grange or Wharton.

Call it a kolache state of mind.

“You can travel across the United States, and at every exit you’ll see McDonald’s and Jack in the Box and Taco Bell,” says Imran Meer, who owns the Kolache Depot in Ennis, about 40 minutes south of Dallas. “Even in Ennis, a small town, we have five Subways. But you don’t find kolache on every corner. That’s what makes it unique, and that it’s unique is why it’s still popular, even after all these years.”

A Long Tradition

Anyone who has driven Interstate 35 more than once knows about West, 15 minutes north of Waco and home to three kolache bakeries—impressive for a town of just 2,800 people. But kolache are about more than geography; there are kolache bakeries as far east as Corpus Christi and as far west as Lubbock, and even in the four big cities—anywhere, apparently, where someone has a recipe, often handed down from the old country, and the wherewithal to use it. Still, if there is a focal point for Texas kolache, based on the concentration of bakeries and Czech communities, it’s probably the area between Austin and Houston that includes Hallettsville, Ellinger, La Grange and Wharton. Yet residents around Caldwell, near College Station and home to a kolach festival of its own, almost certainly will take issue with that in the finest kolache tradition.

“We eat a lot of kolache here,” says Sharee Rainosek of the Hallettsville Chamber of Commerce, who oversees the 19-year-old kolach festival and the chamber’s kolache sales (about 500 dozen a year), kolache queen pageant, kolache-eating contest and, for the last two years, the baking of a 6-foot-long kolach. “This is an area with a long history of Czech and German immigrants, and that means we have a long history of kolache.”

The pastry can trace its Texas roots to Czechs who settled in Central Texas before and after the Civil War. By the beginning of the 20th century, there were 250 Czech communities in the state, according to the “Texas Almanac.” Traditionally, kolache were made at home, with bakery-made pastries unheard of (still true in the Czech Republic). They were made with a sweet yeast dough, hollowed in the center, filled with fruit and eaten as an afternoon snack. Fillings were simple—apricots, poppy seeds, prunes and cherries, all available locally in Eastern Europe. Kolache were similar to other Eastern European pastries such as the Polish piernik and a Ukrainian sweet where filling was placed inside rolled dough.

A century later, much has changed, except for the basic recipe. Finding homemade kolache is becoming more and more difficult, says Rainosek, thanks to the usual 21st century reasons—more women in the workplace, an emphasis on convenience foods and generations further removed from the idea that kolache should be homemade.

Fillings have become almost exotic—pecan pie and chocolate coconut cream among the 30 varieties at Zamykal Gourmet Kolaches in Calvert, for example. The modern bakery, whether the traditional Village Bakery in West, with its lace decor and its claim to be the oldest Czech bakery in the state, or the truck stop-like Hruska’s and Weikel’s, is now where most people, Czech heritage or not, get their kolache.

Always Evolving

This is part of what Jamie Allnutt, the marketing manager at the Village Bakery, calls the kolach’s resurgence in popularity. It’s not so much that the pastry ever went out of favor; rather, she says, “people are going back to their roots, and they want to experience other people’s ethnic roots. It makes them happy when they do that, and they can do that with kolache.”

She divides the postmodern kolache world into three parts:

• Gourmet, where bakeries focus on nontraditional fillings and attempt to update the pastry for the 21st century. Kolache, in fact, have been embraced by the artisan food movement, and trendy takes on kolache are popular in Austin and Houston.

• Bigger is better, where bakeries focus on size.

• Tried and true, where bakers make traditional kolache as they were made in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Which brings up the question that everyone has an answer for, and which is different for everyone who has an answer: What are the best kolache?

The question can’t be answered because, as Jude’ Routh, who owns Zamykal with twin sister Jody Powers, notes, “The thing about kolach recipes is that every family recipe is different, like every family has a different recipe for meatloaf.”

Each region—no, each bakery—has its partisans, and none of the others measure up, in the same way that two people will argue about whether mesquite and direct heat barbecue is better than pecan and indirect heat barbecue as long as either can take a breath. One bakery’s dough is too soft or too yeasty while another’s fillings are too sweet or too fruity. Or it may come down to the kolach not being round enough, because shape matters. Besides, is that other recipe really that authentic? And none of this takes into account the sausage-filled kolach, which isn’t really a kolach at all and often brings on another round of argument (see sidebar below).

And don’t even bring up kolache sold at chain doughnut shops.

The irony is that many of the kolache in Texas have one important thing in common—most of the recipes are authentic, handed down from generation to generation. Routh talks about the family recipe that took three years to perfect. Teresa Jones, who owns Hruska’s, talks about her bakery’s passion for what she calls its original style of kolache. Kalan Besetsny, whose family owns five Besetsny’s Kountry Bakeries in Central Texas, credits his grandmother’s recipe for the business’ success. James Dornak, who bakes kolache at Junior’s Smokehouse in Wharton, uses a recipe from his family, Czech on both sides.

The other irony? Many bakeries, even those that offer exotic fillings, report that their best-selling kolache are the most traditional—apricot, poppy seed and cream cheese.

Regardless of style or niche, everyone sells lots and lots of kolache. Some sell so many that, in the finest competitive tradition, they don’t want to talk about how many. Zamykal, though, which is located in a town with one stoplight on the way to towns not much bigger, will sell as many as 300 a day. At its Hallettsville location, Besetsny’s will sell some 8,000 a week, and Junior’s Smokehouse sells a couple thousand each week.

This, ultimately, is why kolache have endured and evolved over the past 160 years.

“It’s about our German and Czech heritage,” says Besetsny. “It’s still out there, and here in the country; it’s still in the blood. People remember their grandmother making kolache, and they want to relive that. They want to remember what that was like.”

Which is a fine thing for any pastry to be ableto do—even if no one agrees what it’s supposed to taste like.

I admitted to Denise Mazal, chef/owner of Little Gretel, that even after several visits to her Boerne restaurant I wasn’t sure of the line between Czech and German food.

She wasn’t surprised. “There are more than 2,000 castles in the Czech Republic—and it’s no bigger than the Hill Country area. The Czechs used to cook for the German and Austrian emperors in those castles during the Hapsburg monarchy, and Czech cooks were very sought after in Vienna too. So there has been a lot of crossover,” she says. “But it was the Czechs who perfected the schnitzel.”

Little Gretel serves “authentic Czech, traditional German and American favorites” so everyone at your table can cross borders too. Yet it is the authentic and traditional dishes that shine brightest here, as well as Mazal’s drive toward an outstanding dining experience rooted in locally sourced ingredients.

As in many old-world traditions, everything is made in house at Little Gretel—from the light rye bread for sandwiches (made from a starter nurtured over several years) to the hand-stretched pastry for the scrumptious apple strudel. The veal stock for the richly flavorful mushroom sauce on the Jaeger Schnitzel and the toothsome spaetzle and mild white sauerkraut beside it, too. Every tender cutlet is hand-sliced and breaded to order and each flaky kolache individually filled.

“The only exceptions are the wursts,” says Mazal. “It’s so time-consuming and we can get such wonderful sausages locally.” Look for appetizers, kolaches and entrees with smoked buffalo, wild boar and venison links, as well as bratwurst or Kiolbassa brand smoked sausages.

My notion of Czech food never included meatloaf. How foolish of me. Mazal’s Bavarian meatloaf now sets the standard. The light mixture of ground lamb and beef, dotted with yellow and red bell pepper, is wrapped in bacon before baking. “The meat is so lean that we need the bacon,” she says. Topped with rich mushroom sauce and served with mashed potatoes, it is a meal reminiscent of any American heartland home.

And then there are the dumplings. “Every country’s cuisine has dumplings, whether you’re Chinese or French or Italian,” says Mazal. “In the Czech Republic, we have so many. I can make dozens of types: bread, fruit, potato, onion…”

The bread dumplings that accompany most Little Gretel sauce dishes are designed to soak up the goodness on the plate. Mazel makes fresh yeast bread and allows the loaf to harden before cubing and roasting the slices. “Then I make a big cylinder loaf of yeast white bread with the dry cubes kneaded in,” she says. “The loaf is steamed, not baked—and we steam the slices of dumplings again just before they’re plated.” It should be a crime to have her sauce without them.

Wild boar and deer are popular in the Czech Republic, says Mazal, whose family in Moravia has been fostering and harvesting wild game for generations. “It’s wonderful to live here, where it’s also so abundant,” says Mazal. On a recent trip home to Prague, she was surprised to see wild game being grilled. “Traditionally we’ve always roasted or braised wild game,” she explains. “But grilling is becoming very popular, so I was glad to be there and learn Czech-style grilling techniques from my chef friends.”

Two of those special chefs will be joining Mazal Oct. 20 – Nov. 2 for special Dine & Wine events on the Little Gretel patio. And they’ve got impressive credentials. Chef Václav Pstros will have just finished his stint as the official Czech chef at Olympic Village during the London games. And Jan Michalek, a Weber Grill Master Chef among other accomplishments, will man the grill filled with heritage pork, wild turkey, lamb, sausages and more. But you can still get into the game any time: Bohemian herb roasted duck is on the nightly menu, and local game and heritage meats frequently make the daily specials list.

Texans know sausage and fruit kolaches, but most have not had a frgál—a super-sized, 15-inch sweet kolache that’s sliced into wedges. Mazal adds artistic flair to these giants with intricate flower designs to channel the fruit, cheese or poppy seed fillings.

“The story is that when men would go off to defend the eastern or western borders, their wives would send them with a frgál,” explains Mazal. “They traditionally had straight lines of fillings along the top, to represent the borders they were defending, and almonds around the circumference, to remind them of the individuals they were protecting—the family at home. When I heard the story, I knew I had to make them.”

Mazal’s modern interpretations are works of art, and like most everything at Little Gretel, steeped in both tradition and creativity. Don’t miss an opportunity to get in on both.

FAST FACTS

Little Gretel, 518 River Road, Boerne, (830) 331-1368, littlegretel.com

Lunch and dinner daily; open til 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday

$-$$

Chef/Owner: Denise Mazal

Cuisine: Authentic Czech, traditional German, American favorites

Ambiance/Decor: Modern interior features bright colors, comfortable seating and conversation-starting artwork, including a crystal sailing-ship chandelier, beer steins and an impressive image of Prague. The front beer garden/patio offers a view of Boerne’s new River Walk.

Reservations: Recommended

Parking: Adjacent lot
and in back

Don’t miss: Pilsner beers on tap, including Urquell, Kwak and Hacker-Pschorr, in honor of the city of Pilsen in the Czech Republic. Wines and mixed drinks are also available.