How long has Bob Kolar started his work day in the middle of the night?
The Sunkist Bakery owner travels back to high school to answer that question.
"I started baking when I was about 15 years old," says the father of four and grandfather of two. "My mom worked in a little bakery in Walnut Grove, Minn., and I started helping out - first with cleaning and then with baking."
He was hired the next year at a bakery in Tracy, Minn., where he started his shift between midnight and 12:30 a.m., got off at 7:30 a.m. and went to school at 8:15 a.m.
Thanks to a mentor's early encouragement, Bob began to consider baking as a future occupation. But he wondered if the night hours would be a problem. His mentor pointed out that "nobody bothers you" at work in the middle of the night. Much can be accomplished.
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He also pointed out that the bakery business brings rich opportunities to develop lasting associations with walk-ins and business customers who order big. "That sounded good to me," says Bob who came to Sioux City in the early 1980s. He first worked at and then purchased Sunkist Bakery, a seven-days-a-week commitment. He can't imagine another life.
"I love baking, I love this community and I still love coming to work in the middle of the night," says Bob as he wraps up a 12-hour day that began about 2:30 a.m.
Bob can do just fine on about five or six hours sleep a night. At wake-up time, he rises, showers and watches ESPN "for about five minutes" before heading out from his family's acreage between Hinton and Merrill, Iowa. "I turn on the music and nobody bothers me. It's the best driving time there is."
His wife, Jodi Kolar, "laughs at my routine," he says. Yet she's every bit as dedicated to her position as Associate Professor and Chair of Nursing Education at St. Luke's College. "We both love our jobs and we've made it all work," says Bob who raises bighorn sheep as a hobby.
After he arrives at his Morningside Avenue bakery, Bob starts the process that keeps some 17 employees engaged in various aspects of producing, selling and delivering dozens and dozens of different bakery items in impressive quantities.
Walk-in customers enjoy a range of goodies. Many are regulars who stay awhile to chat over pastries and coffee at the place once occupied by Roe's Dairy.
"I really enjoy the people who come in and I appreciate their loyalty," says Bob. "One of the best things about the day is coming out front and seeing people I know. That's a great feeling."
He also values the camaraderie of employees engaged in the labor-intensive business that serves customers in Sioux City and the surrounding area. One of the key items in that big-volume business is ready-to-bake pizza dough for a variety of local "pizzerias."
Like most other Sunkist Bakery products, the pizza dough is made from scratch. Training in Manhattan, Kan., supplemented Bob's culinary and baking training in the art of making pizza dough in 10- to 17-inch "skins." Sunkist does a "huge amount of pizza dough. In fact we just finished up about 800 crusts for one customer."
More traditional bakery items are on display for walk-in customers. Cakes, from German chocolate to Snickers to champagne creations, are in full view in a revolving display case. Along the front counter, customers can delight in an array of doughnuts and their cousin pastries, including Bismarks, Long Johns, flips, Danish, fritters, braids, cream puffs and éclairs.
"Do we make our own éclairs? Yes, we make them from scratch," says Bob.
Autumn whets the appetite for fruit, pecan and cream pies. Sunkist makes caramel apples as well as compact picnic cakes, carrot cake, classic brownies, lemon bars, strawberry bars, pumpkin bars and peanut butter bars.
Dozens of kinds of breads, even diet bread, are on the bakery's list. And how about hamburger buns, hot dog buns, Kaiser rolls, Pullman loaves, assorted dinner rolls, English muffins and bagels?
Pecan rolls, muffins and mini loaves are regulars alongside varied cookies, including, crispies, thumbprints, cut-outs, cookies-on-a-stick, cowboys, chocolate chip and sugar cookies.
With independent bakeries becoming a rarity, Bob takes pride in his operation's link to traditions that started centuries ago. Bakeries were at the heart of most communities. They were mainly one-person operations, often regulated by local governments. The exception? Large-scale operations that produced biscuits, known as "hardtack" or "ships bread," needed for sea voyages, overland expeditions and the military.
These practically indestructible biscuits, which were more like crackers, had no home-baked counterpart. Production was limited to commercial enterprises often connected to flour mills, according to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. The huge U.S. hardtack industry is said to have evolved into our even larger commercial cookie industry.
Affordable sugar and flour, the introduction of chemical rising agents, such as baking soda, and new cookie recipes helped fuel the commercial cookie industry in the late 19th century. Modern ovens, mechanical mixers and other technology, as well as growth in urban population and women working outside the home meant less baking at home and more business for independent bakeries. Sunkist Bakery has existed since the 1930s, first operating in downtown Sioux City, according to Bob.
The greatest reward for his work is likely the same as that of long-ago bakers who also started their work days in the wee hours of the morning.
