Every Dallasite who has driven I-35 to Austin knows the ritual. About 75 miles south of downtown, you pull off in West, stand in line, and walk out with a box of sausage kolaches for the road. Somewhere, though, a Texas Czech grandmother is shaking her head. What you bought is a klobasnek.
A kolache is sweet. The name comes from the Czech kola, for wheels or rounds, and it describes a round of soft yeast dough with a dimple of fruit, sweet cheese or poppy seed in the middle. Czech immigrants brought it to Central Texas in the 1800s.
The sausage version was born on that same stretch of highway. In 1952, Wendel Montgomery and his family opened the Village Bakery on East Oak Street in West, widely considered the first bakery in Texas to sell kolaches to the public. Around 1953 he wrapped sausage in his kolache dough, a Czech-Texan take on the hot dog, and called it klobasniky, from klobása, the Czech word for sausage. One is a klobasnek. Two or more are klobasniky.
It spread to bakeries, donut shops and gas stations across the state, and the names blurred. Much of the confusion traces to Kolache Factory, which opened in Houston in 1982 and sold both under one word.
The Village Bakery closed in 2019 after Montgomery’s daughter, Mimi Montgomery Irwin, died suddenly. On May 23 of this year, new owners Shelly and Darrell Miller reopened it at 113 E. Oak St. with the family’s original recipes. It is open 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 8 a.m. to noon Sunday. Out by the interstate, Slovacek’s keeps more than 35 kolaches in the case, plus a sausage and kraut klobasnek.
Dallas doesn’t have to make the drive anymore, though plenty of people still do it for the ritual alone. Closer to home, Pearl Snap Kolaches at 4006 White Settlement Road in Fort Worth bakes both. Get a sausage and cheese klobasnek and an apricot kolache and you have the whole argument on one plate. In Fate, Four Czechs Bakery at 104 E. Fate Main Place makes both from a family recipe.
Call it whatever you like at the counter. The sweet one came from the old country. The one with sausage is pure Texas.
