Amana Bakeries

Each Amana village once had a non-commercial bakery to supply fresh bread and pastries to the local community kitchens  which served about 40 people each meal. The baker would pull up to the kitchen in his horse drawn wagon, ring a bell and a worker would come out and tell him how many loaves they would need, some 12 for the day. On Saturdays he would deliver special pastries for Sunday morning, the fruit- filled coffee cake. The recipes were based on German ones as black bread, round white and round bread, and long loaves, some 3,000 loaves a day from 70 batches of dough. Two large grist mills processed grain into flour for the many bakeries of which four consolidated in 1943 and moved to Upper South, then became commercial with fuel oil ovens, the modern equipment, run many years by the Bringham family. The 147 year old brick building, originally opened as a general store in the 1800's, closed as of 2013 and baking Amana brand was hired out to Baker's Pride in Burlington, Iowa. Only one open hearth bakery remains as part of a home in Middle, no longer uses cut wood but gas fuel, with products made much like those from early Amana and the Hahn family. All the breads are still very much a local favorite addition to any meal!