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