Nemacolin Executive Pastry Chef Scott Tennant of Uniontown, works on a 12 feet tall, 14 feet long and 12 feet deep gingerbread house at Nemacolin's Chateau Lafayette, in Farmington, Pa.

FARMINGTON, Pa. — The sweet, gingery scent wafting across the lobby of Nemacolin Woodlands Resort’s Chateau LaFayette is enough to make a mouth water and a stomach rumble.

Visitors follow their noses to a vision of a walk-in bakery built from gingerbread, icing and candy.

The pastry team at the Fayette County resort has for years constructed holiday houses, a train, even a castle out of gingerbread.

Its executive pastry chef Scott Tennant’s fifth such creation and the first one large enough for visitors to enter.

They can pop their heads through a window for a photo op, purchase a sweet or spicy treat and perhaps catch a baker decorating cookies.

Tennant, 43, and his staff of 10 partnered with the resort’s carpentry shop to build a life-size version of the traditional holiday creation.

Visitors can “ooh” and “ahh” their way through the Fat Bird (Nemacolin’s logo and mascot) Bakery — 12 feet tall, 14 feet long and 12 feet deep — through New Year’s Day.

Each year during the week of Thanksgiving, the pastry chefs construct their creation in the Chateau lobby.

“Last year, we had kind of a ‘Grandma’s house’ display, a Cape Cod type (of house), but you couldn’t walk inside,” Tennant says.

Nemacolin’s carpenters began working on the shop’s wood base in early October.

Since Nov. 16, Tennant and his staff have worked on the bakery nightly — totaling more than 600 hours — following their regular shifts.

He anticipates using 14 50-pound bags of flour, 18 50-pound bags of confectioners’ sugar and 1,000 pounds each of gingerbread and royal icing.