Sweet Legacy
PENN TWP — It's early in the morning, 3 a.m. That would be the middle of the night for most people, but the kitchen at Boldy's Homemade Goodies is already a busy place.
Just like any morning for the past 14 years, Jim Boldy is looking over a freshly made batch of doughnuts at the little bakery along Route 8.
But this is a new era for the business, and Boldy's job is not just to satisfy the sweet tooth of early morning commuters on their way to work. Boldy recently sold the bakery to new owners and now his job, his mission, is to carry on a legacy.
The diminutive white building is where Boldy and his late wife, Anna Margaret, worked hand-in-hand at their thriving bakery business. The bakery was well-known for its homemade goods.
Boldy and his wife were farmers and had built their business by selling produce and home baked goods at area farm markets. At its peak, Boldy's was supplying baked goods throughout the local and Pittsburgh areas, and the couple was also running a full-service restaurant.
Boldy also worked as a millwright for US Steel for 29 years. The farm and bakery was a family affair, but as the couple's seven children set off on their own careers, the Boldys focused their efforts on the small bakery business.
When Boldy and his wife both were about to have knee replacement surgery in July, they shut the bakery down for what was to be a temporary break. Then came devastating news for the couple: Anna Margaret was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. She passed away in August, after only two chemotherapy treatments.
Boldy decided it was time to sell. Members of the King family of Valencia were the buyers. Joe, Tim and Pete King of Freedom Farm Market took over the bakery, remodeled and re-opened on Nov. 5. Their sister, Elizabeth King of Valencia, takes charge of the kitchen.
And even though the bakery is under new ownership, some components remain the same.
Boldy, 72, is still in the kitchen, as he has been for years. But now he has a new role as mentor, especially to Elizabeth, as he coaches her in the preparation of the doughnuts, cookies, pastries and pies that the bakery's loyal customers crave.King is no newcomer to the kitchen. She trained as a pastry chef at the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute in Pittsburgh. But she's finding her current assignment is as much art as science."It's kind of like baking with your grandma," said the 25-year-old King. "When you go to school, it's a science. Everything is weighed out, because that's the most consistent way to do it. We weigh stuff there, but it's more about the feel of it. And even though it's not the most precise, we still get the same product because Mr. Boldy makes sure we understand how he does it.""It's hard to show somebody in a few weeks what you've learned in 40 years," Boldy admitted. "You can give somebody recipes, but it's not the same. It's the techniques too. They're catching on quick."Unlike many commercial bakeries, Boldy said the baked goods his wife produced were honed from traditional family recipes."This is actually authentic homemade food" Boldy said. "It's Slovak and Polish. They made a lot of things from scratch. A lot of these recipes are from my mother and my wife's mother. Some bake shops, they make just ordinary recipes. These have been handed from my grandmother to my mother to my sisters," he said.He admitted initially being a bit unsure about working with the new owners, who range in age from 21 to 26."I thought it would be different, but it's not," Boldy said of his presence in the kitchen with this new generation. "It's like showing one of my family. With them, they want to learn. They told me, 'We want it to be the same, we don't want changes.'"Both King and Boldy said it's the family attitude and farming background that they have in common that allows them to blend together so smoothly."They're family oriented," he said of the Kings. "That's what I wanted. This was a family business and that's how I wanted it to stay.""Mr. Boldy, and his entire family, they're just sweethearts," King said. "It's almost like, not that we're just the same, but we have the same kind of understanding of hard work. I think he appreciates that."
Boldy also appreciates a good doughnut."I really enjoy making the doughnuts," King said, recalling the first batch they made and her brother's surprise and delight at seeing the dough puff in the fryer."It's nice to see the look on Mr. Boldy's face when they're done just perfectly," she said.And if they're not, "he's not afraid to tell you" she added with a laugh."It's not as serious. It's not science. It's just the love of baking," she said. "His recipes, they have developed over time, and the just feel of it, of doing it over so many years, but they work."Loyal customers glad to see the little store re-open are even more happy to find their favorite goodies largely unchanged."I used to come in here for coffee because the coffee was so good," said Patricia Kemper of Penn Township, during a recent stop at the bakery. "I wouldn't make it at home. I'd come here. And (Anna Margaret) made the best pies. I mean, I quit baking because of this place."As Boldy and King work side-by-side to flip a round of thick cookie dough, this is more than a cooking lesson. Boldy is not simply handing over a bakery business. He is handing down a legacy — the legacy of the life he built with his wife of 51 years. The couple's photo hangs above the counter and Anna Margaret's presence can still be felt, as well as tasted, in her recipes that continue to flow from the kitchen she loved."She really enjoyed baking," Boldy said. "She was gifted really. She would take dough and make it into something miraculous. I'm really happy to see it still going on."
