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Baked
New World

The traditional Jewish bakery is
changing to stay traditional.

Yossi Adler has made changes at Zeman's New York Bakery.

BILL CARROLL
Special to the Jewish News

M

Iles Zeman lived above the
family bakery on Hastings
Street, and then 12th
Street. "My bedroom was right over
the ovens, and there was no air condi-
tioning in those days — the heat was
stifling," says Zeman, 84, now a semi-
retired lawyer and business owner liv-
ing in Franklin.
For his parents, Louis and Leah
Zeman, the famous Detroit bakery
they founded in 1918 was practically
their whole life, and they worked long
hours. Zeman's New York Kosher
Bakery flourishes today on Greenfield
Road in Oak Park under Yossi Adler,
23, of Southfield, a dynamic young
proprietor with innovative marketing
ideas. He also studies Talmud three
hours each day at the nearby Kollel
Institute of Greater Detroit.
Bakers don't reside above their bak-
eries anymore. The employees behind
the counters usually no longer blandly
ask "what else?" and total the bill in
pencil on one of the bags. And the
owners aren't content to just sell chal-
lahs and seven-layer cake and call it a
day.
Some bakers package their breads

and rolls and sell them to supermar-
kets, synagogues and caterers; some
have recently begun to market dairy
products and offer quick lunches.
The co-owner of one "Jewish" estab-
lishment, Modern Bakery in Oak
Park, is an African-American who
honed his baking skills in the heavily
Orthodox Williamsburg section of
Brooklyn, N.Y., and has been baking
and selling for 42 years.
It's a far cry from the heyday of bak-
eries in the Detroit-area Jewish com-
munity. Gone are the old-time bak-
eries, like Epstein's, Goldstein's,
Warsaw, Elson, Mertz and National.
The Zeman's name endures.
Adler added a dairy case recently
and is turning part of Zeman's into a
mini-supermarket, selling milk,
cheese, eggs, coffee, soups and some
frozen foods. We now make our own
sandwiches to attract the lunch busi-
ness," said Adler, "and after some
remodeling, we plan to set up tables
outside, like a cafe, for people to eat
lunch."
A few doors down, Rita Jerome of
Unique Kosher Carryout is comple-
menting the catering business with
eight tables for the lunch crowd.
"There's no conflict with Zeman's,"
she points out "because they have

dairy lunches and I serve meat."
Bonnie Fishman finally "came out"
from the small house in Southfield
where she operated-Bonnie's Patisserie
for 25 years and is vying for the break-
fast and lunch business at a new loca-
tion "out in the open," she says. It's
now called Bonnie's Kitchen, at
Telegraph and Maple roads in
Bloomfield Township.
Some of the Jewish bakeries are con-
tent to stay with the traditional over-
the-counter business, as they dispense
rye breads with seeds, corn breads,
chocolate horns, kichel and other
delights. The bakery section of
Zingerman's Delicatessen in Ann
Arbor still boasts about its pumper-
nickel raisin bread, rugelach and man-
delbroit. Star Bakeries, which originat-
ed about 80 years ago, is still going
strong with stores in Oak Park and
Southfield. Diamond Bake Shop,
which evolved from the Jewell Bakery
chain 30 years ago, gets a good part of
the West Bloomfield business.
Most of these chains supply pack-
aged baked goods to the area super-
markets, many of which no longer
have an old-fashioned bakery counter.
Hiller's Markets are the exception.

"Having a well-staffed bakery
counter within the store gives us that
personal touch and provides better
service to our customers," said Mike
Pasternak of Farmington Hills, Hiller's
bakery department manager. "There's
a better connection between us and
the customers; we get to know them
better."
Three bakers at the Hiller's
Commerce store produce many fancy,
special-order cakes for all occasions,
but the bakery also sells Zeman's chal-
lahs and onion rolls and caterer Paul
Kohn's kosher cakes at Passover time.
'And we even added frozen pizzas near
the bakery department recently," said
Pasternak.
Other than the supervised kosher
Zeman's, the bakeries and bakery sec-
tions in all of the stores maintain a
"kosher style" status. The only other
Council of Orthodox Rabbis super-
vised bakery in the area is the Bake
Station in Southfield.
Some synagogues alternate using
Zeman's and the Bake Station for their
baked goods each week. Bake Station
owner Steve Katz declined to be inter-

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2005

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