by Leslie Lytle, Messenger Staff Writer

This year Tennessee’s oldest bakery will celebrate 120 years of making cakes, cookies, pastries and breads using the same recipes and techniques. In the 1880s, Swiss immigrants John and Louise Baggenstoss bought a Gruetli Lager farmstead. In 1902, they moved into the second floor of a two-story building in downtown Tracy City with their sons. On the first floor, Dutch Maid Bakery opened its doors to customers. Current owner and master baker Cindy Day calls the bakery a museum of “taste and see.”

An antique donut making press looks down on display cases filled with baked goods. On a neighboring shelf is a red child’s wagon a five-year-old boy used to pull through town delivering bread. The wagon sports the logo Dutch Maid on the side.

The wooden building with a native stone foundation burned in the early 1920s. The Baggenstosses rebuilt with brick, salvaging part of the original structure, some shelves, and baking apparatus Day still uses. During the depression the Baggenstosses took homeless local boys under their wing, feeding them and letting them sleep in the bakery at night. “They would have died,” Day said. “Back then boys age 12 were expected to be on their own and working.” To help out town people, the Baggenstosses filled 100 pound flour sacks with bakery trimming and sold them for just a nickel a bag.

When World War II came, the six Baggenstoss sons, who then ran the business, enlisted as did all the local men the bakery employed. The Baggenstoss men believed women were not suited for the bakery business heavy lifting of 100-pound flour sacks. The Baggenstoss women rose to the challenge, and in the men’s absence the bakery thrived. All six sons survived the war. During the economic boom that followed, Dutch Maid opened a second bakery in Decherd which remained in operation until the late 1960s. In the 1970s international demand for Dutch Maid fruitcake sparked 30,000 fruitcake sales one holiday season.

In the early 1990s, the three Baggenstoss sons still living, men in their late 80s and early 90s, discussed selling the bakery. “We wouldn’t have to sell if you weren’t so lazy,” one brother chastised the other — or so Day reported, recounting tales of family history passed on to her by Polly Baggenstoss who married one of the Baggenstoss boys.

When Dutch Maid went on the market, a potential buyer from Indiana made an offer. Lynn Craig, one of the depression era children taken in by the family, became the owner and master baker from 1992 until 2002 when he died. Craig’s wife died soon after. The couple’s son tried running the bakery, but soon put the business on the market and began selling the building’s contents on the sidewalk in front of the store. Day, visiting property she and her husband owned in Tracy City, bought Dutch Maid and before long opened the doors for business again.

Day had worked previously as a baker for three different grocery store chains. As with the Baggenstosses, Dutch Maid remained a family run business with Day’s children, husband, and mother helping. And Polly Baggenstoss visited two or three times a week, taste testing and tutoring Day in baking and family lore.

Day uses exclusively Baggenstoss family recipes with occasional tweaking and enhancements. The bakery no longer uses lard and sometimes substitutes honey for sugar. A family whiskey cake recipe morphed into Dutch Maid Tennessee Moonshine Cake.

Health concerns have prompted Day to consider selling, but she rejected three buyers who failed to embrace her vision for continuing the bakery’s historic traditions.

Day, a small woman, showed off her biceps. “Every loaf of bread is hand kneaded.”

Upcoming anniversary events include monthly gourmet dinners and featuring several old recipes out of circulation for a while. Visitors can watch the bakery at work from the catwalk above the kitchen. “To see and taste” the bakery’s history firsthand, visit Dutch Maid at 109 Main St., Tracy City.