KENOSHA — If you were to write a book on the story of Racine’s O&H Danish Bakery, several chapters would be dedicated to the Kringle. The oval shaped pastry was made famous in these parts decades ago when Peter Olesen’s great grandfather opened a small bakery on Racine’s north side.
“It's just a great pastry, one that's hard to make, hard to replicate” says Peter Olesen, President of O&H Danish Bakery.
For more than 74 years the bakery has been making Kringle and sending them near and far for people to enjoy. The pastry has been the foundation of the business.
Olesen credits the success of the business to “the ingenuity of the family to be able to diversify from the 500 square foot corner bakery to offering our products by mail across the country shipped to your door.”
Behind the scenes at O&H Danish Bakery, while other pastries are being made, you can clearly see the Kringle is the number one product. Staff make more than 10,000 a day.
TMJ4's Tom Durian talked with Mike Maccanelli, Manager of Raw Production at the bakery. He has been helping make Kringle for 21 years. He told me the process of making the dough for the pastry takes 3 days and uses a lot of butter.
Maccanelli taught us how to make them by hand but much of today’s work is done by machines. One part of the process is still done by hand, the shaping of the Kringle.
The Kringle are sent to the 5 local bakeries O&H runs across the Milwaukee area and mailed to customers that order by mail. The biggest client is Trader Joe's. O&H has been delivering Kringle to the California based grocery chain for 10 years.
There are currently nearly 2 dozen different flavors of Kringle.
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