St. Mary’s Church Women Encourage Younger Members to Help Bake Kolaches

Women at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in St. Mary have been baking kolaches for fish fries and other charitable events since the 1980s. Normally about 10 women and four men volunteer their services every other Thursday morning, the day before the Friday night fish fry, to mix 10 batches of dough to make over 100 dozen kolaches. If extra dough is left over, it is used for cinnamon rolls, cinnamon twists and dinner rolls. The kolaches sell out every time.
The regular flavors that fill the kolaches include cherry, poppy-seed, peach, apricot and cream cheese. Other flavors that have been added in recent years include lemon coconut, blueberry, gooseberry, strawberry and strawberry cream cheese. Of course each kolache is sprinkled with posypka (streusel crumble) topping. Most of the fruit fillings are homemade and are prepared on Wednesdays before the Thursday kolache baking day. A recipe can be found in St. Mary’s Catholic Church cookbook.
The women take care of mixing and baking the kolaches, then, once the kolaches are removed from a baking sheet to a cooling rack, the men who volunteer spray them with cooking spray to bring out the shine.
The dough mixer, Karen Lempka normally arrives about 7 a.m. to start mixing dough. The rest of the kolache crew comes in about 8:30 a.m. Kolache baker Stella Pella usually arrives around 9 a.m., and will bake seven baking sheets of kolaches at a time in two convection ovens. Pella said using two confection ovens has cut down the time for kolache baking by 1 ½ to 2 hours. The time required these days is about five hours.
The ingredients used for the dough and posypka add up: 84 eggs, 64 cups of sugar, about 200 pounds of flour, and 85 sticks of butter. The kolaches are baked on 16 large baking sheets and 25 small baking sheets. Volunteers come in later on Thursday to bag the kolaches, using about 4500 individual plastic bags.
Janice Lapatka has been helping with the kolache baking process since she and her husband, moved to the Tecumseh area eight years ago. “I’m Polish and this really brings me back to my roots,” said Lapatka. “I enjoy the camaraderie, the aroma and seeing the end product.”
Terry Kerr is another transplant who didn’t grow up in the St. Mary area. Terry didn’t begin regularly volunteering to bake kolaches until she retired. Her husband, Ray, said helping with the kolache baking is a good way to serve the community and the church. “It’s a lot of fun,” he said. Kerr is one of the four men who come and help remove the kolaches from the baking sheets to the cooling racks and then to the tables once they have cooled. “We know the women appreciate having us help out,” said Ray.
Kerr also said that after the baking and clean-up, everyone joins in eating a meal and socializing together to celebrate their accomplishments for the day.
Lois Ann Agena said kolache baking is a dying tradition. “I think it would be great to get more young people to come and learn about baking kolaches.” Agena has fond memories of helping her mom, Rita Lempka and grandma, Leona Pella who were known for their kolache baking. Agena added that all of her brothers can bake a mean pan of cinnamon rolls as well.
Agena’s daughter, Emily has come to help with kolache baking from time to time, and right now she is raising a future kolache baker. Agena’s son, Sam, has always been helpful in eating kolaches.
Abby Heusman and her sister Megan Boldt plan to continue volunteering their time to assist with baking kolaches once a year. “These women and men know how to bake kolaches like a well oiled machine,” said Megan.
“It’s fun to see non-parish members as well as former members come back and learn how to bake kolaches,” Agena concluded.