A Texas native has puts a southern twist on a classic Czech Republic dish and set up shop in Church Hill selling her version of kolaches.
A Texas native has puts a southern twist on a classic Czech Republic dish and set up shop in Church Hill selling her version of kolaches.
Heather Horak was disappointed when she moved to Richmond and found that not a single bakery, coffee shop or restaurant was making kolaches.
“I would go to every festival, and be like, ‘where are the kolaches, somebody needs to bring kolaches and I was like, ‘well, guess it’s going to be me,” Horak said.
For those looking at the word kolache and scratching their heads, a kolache (pronounced ko-lock-ey) or (kah-lat-chee) is a puff pastry usually filled with fruit or cheese, that originated in the Czech Republic and has since become extremely popular in Texas, Nebraska and Wisconsin.
“In Texas, where I grew up, it’s a billion-dollar industry, it started in the ‘80s and that’s what you do, you go out and eat kolaches for breakfast,” she said.
Horak opened up her shop, Craft Kolache, earlier this month in Church Hill selling sweet and savory kolaches that are a take on her Czech grandmother’s recipe, which she’s been eating since she was little.
“My grandmother would say what I’m making is not a kolache,” Horak said laughing. “Kolaches traditionally are those flat ones that have fruit in the middle like prunes, apricot… poppy-seed, farmers cheese. In Texas, they’ve taken what’s called really a klobasnek, which is a meat-filled kolache, and Americanized it.”
So Horak combined the two and made her own version of a kolache.
“I’ve really put a different kind of southern spin on it,” she said. “I fill them with red beans and rice and jambalaya, sausage and gravy…so kind of taking a totally different direction.”
Kolache flavors rotate weekly, and on my recent visit, her menu featured chorizo, sweet potato, and cheese; bacon and jalapeno with a spicy cream cheese; mushroom, havarti, and gouda; fig, prosciutto and goat cheese; and a popular Texas kolache, the Spicy Piggy, which is filled with smoked sausage, cheddar and jalapeno. She also sells RVA’s Ironclad Coffee and Confluence Coffee and makes her own jams.
And while all of these are making my mouth water, for the purist seasoned kolache eater, Horak said they aren’t exactly happy.
“They’re like where are your poppy seed and prune?” she said. “There have been so many Czech and Slovak people,” she said. People have really come out of the woodwork, it’s been a big deal.”
Richmonders are just becoming hip to kolaches, but her Horak, the pastry has been has been a part of her life since she was little girl.
“It’s what we had all the time. My mom was a single mom and that was the easiest food for her to make,” she said. “She could make them on Sunday night, freeze them, and then it was this complete little meal.”
A quick and filling treat is exactly the concept she hopes to bring to Richmond with her sweet and savory puff pastries.
“An inexpensive, blue collar kind of food, that’s not really up here, that people can take and go,’ she said.
Only operating on the weekends for now, Horak is quite the busy baker. She’s works full-time as a physical therapist in Franklin County and commutes to Church Hill, where she’s lived for the last three years. She bakes at midnight to have fresh kolaches ready to go in the morning.
And the baking process isn’t such as simple as rolling out some dough, popping them in the oven and serving.
Traditionally, her grandmother went through five rises to make her kolache, but Horak said she’s doing it a little differently.
“It takes forever so I’ve cut it down to three rises, so for a batch of 60 it still takes me four to five hours,” she said. “You make the dough, they rise, then shape them into balls, let them rise again, stuff them, let them rise again.”
The baker moved from Texas to Hawaii eight years ago living there for five years before coming to Richmond.
“I took a six-month contract there and ended up staying for five years,” she said.
Prior to having a brick and mortar, Horak was selling her kolaches at South of the James farmers market and people could not get enough.
“{I} sold out every week, made 200 pieces, usually we’d sell out in the first hour,” Horak said.
Last year she applied and received a $5,000 grant from Bon Secours’ Supporting East End Entrepreneurship Development (SEED) program, which awarded 12 Church Hill businesses a total of $110,000 to open or expand their businesses.
“It’s a reimbursement grant,” Horak said, who plans to buy what she calls a “dough robot” to help her with the baking process.
Needing a commercial kitchen to cook at the farmers markets, Horak leased her Churchill storefront, at 600 N. 29 St., in May never expecting the popularity that would come from her kolaches.
“I never ended to open the doors, but people are knocking on my doors every day and I had so many special orders that I opened,” she said.
Her custom orders make up a good chunk of her business.
“People want them for baby showers and work parties,” she said. “I do probably five sometimes eight a week.”
For now, Horak is content with her part-time business, but said there is a possibility in the future for her to be serving up kolaches full-time.
“That’s the goal. It’s certainly the goal to not be doing these crazy hours…” she said. “My lease is up in May, I first wanted to see how the farmers market goes, and that went really well, and now I want to see how this goes until May so I’m just kind of dipping my toe in the water.”
Craft Kolache is open Friday mornings 7-11 am and Saturday mornings 8 am to 11 am. Check out Horak’s delicious treats on her Instagram.
