FEBRUARY 24 • 2022 | 13
Y
ou’re always warm and never
hungry if you work for a
bakery,” said Stacy Fox, a
hometown gal with a thing for old
bakeries — old Jewish bakeries in
particular.
Fox was 16 when she began working
with Marty and Joyce Herman
at Marty’s Cookies & Bakery in
Birmingham, a business known for its
definitive chocolate chip cookies. At
age 24, she purchased the bakery and
kept it for 20 years.
A tasty new chapter for Fox opened
last year when she became the
president and managing partner at
two venerable bakeries, best known as
Star Bakery in Oak Park and Diamond
Bakery in West Bloomfield.
Raised with two sisters in Oak Park
by their parents, Saul and Shirley
Arsht, Fox didn’t hesitate to walk from
home on Colleen Street to buy Star
Bakery cookies. Many moons later,
another young customer stopping
by on a weekday was River Morack,
4, of Huntington Woods. Her mom,
Madeline, said River had asked her to
“get me a treat at Star Bakery.”
KEEPING BAKERIES ALIVE
What is it about a bakery?
“Bakeries connect the generations.
It’s a business that makes people
happy,” said Fox, 53, of Bloomfield
Hills. “But it’s become so unusual to
see a neighborhood bakery anymore.”
If Fox and her two partners,
Oakland County businessmen Dan
Buckfire and David Schechter, hadn’t
seized separate opportunities to
purchase Star and Diamond in 2021,
“I believe the bakeries might have
gone away,” she said.
The partners acquired Star Bakery
on July 24 from Esther Moskowitz.
She had run Star since her father
Ben Moskowitz took ill six years
ago. “After Ben passed away in April,
Esther was ready to do something
else,” Fox said. Noting that Ben
Moskowitz’s sister, Fanny Herman,
was the mother of Marty “Marty’s
Cookies” Herman, Fox said, “It
seemed like a natural fit to come into
Marty’s uncle’s place.”
Owner Gina Rowley sold
Diamond Bakery to them just before
Thanksgiving. “She was ready to
retire,” Fox said. The bakery is located
in the West Bloomfield Shopping Mall
on Orchard Lake Road. “Diamond
caters to Jewish customers,” Fox said,
“but it’s not been a Jewish-owned
business for more than 40 years. We
want to take it back to offering our
own authentic Jewish recipes,” such as
the mandelbread and rugelach recipes
that came from each of her husband
Michael’s grandmothers.
LOYALTY TO TRADITION
Fox is respectful of her clientele
preferences for particular bakery
Stacy Fox is determined to preserve and
improve Jewish-style bakeries in Metro Detroit.
continued on page 15
ESTHER ALLWEISS INGBER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
A Little Bakery History
“Star Bakery
Shop” was
founded in
Detroit in 1915 in
a neighborhood
that became
known in the
1920s as Black
Bottom. Ten
years later, in
1925, an ad
placed in the
Detroit Jewish
Chronicle
newspaper announced the grand open-
ing of Star Bakery Shop proprietors
Harry Felsot and I. Penn’s “new sanitary
bake shop.” The address was 12028
Dexter Boulevard, between Elmhurst
and Monterrey. The ad touted the quality
of bakery specialties, including corn-
bread, cheesecake, crescents, jelly rolls,
“baigle,” pumpernickel, “Sabbath bread”
and more.
Star Bakery moved in 1954 to its store-
front today on Coolidge Highway, two
blocks north of Lincoln Street. Between
1968-1970, Jack Moskowitz acquired
the bakery, then sold it to his brother
Ben. Under Ben, a different business,
Fabulous Star Bakery in Southfield’s
New Orleans Mall, became another Star
Bakery. In addition to that Greenfield
and 10 Mile location and the current
store, Star Bakery at its peak also includ-
ed locations at Nine Mile and Coolidge
in Oak Park and Northwestern Highway,
north of 12 Mile, in Southfield.
Baker Edward and wife Mersha
“Mitzi” Seid sold their Jewel Bakery in
Southfield’s Harvard Row Shopping Mall
in the mid-1970s and opened Diamond
Bakery at the former Shopping Center
Market inside just-opened Orchard
Mall in West Bloomfield. Seid and two
associates also operated a Diamond
Bakery, the only one remaining, at its
current West Bloomfield location next to
Pickles & Rye Deli. The bakery was sold
in 1981, according to Ed’s widow, Mitzi
Seid, 88, of Las Vegas. Fox said mem-
bers of a Polish family were the buyers.
Gina Rowley from the family was the
most recent owner of Diamond Bakery,
prior to Fox and her partners. Rowley
purchased it three years earlier from her
brother, Kenny.
PHOTOS BY GLENN TRIEST
Jewish
Bakery
Renewal