Staff writer
Summer isn’t the best for baking. In a shed with two ovens cooking more than 300 pastries daily, the temperature can hit 95 degrees. A taste of OK Bread Company’s creations can shut down any concerns in seconds.
Sam Oborny has put 3 ½ years into her bakery, OK Bread Company, which cooks cinnamon rolls, bierocks, and extremely popular kolaches. Her coworkers, Anna Kristek and Brenda Medlin, help her put together 15 to 20 orders of varying sizes weekly.
“I love working with dough. It’s alive,” Oborny said.
Her Hobart mixer is a key piece of equipment. Although expensive, it has proved its worth on her family’s farm. The mixer can hold six batches of her sweet bread after it has doubled in size from yeast rising.
“I make all my dough in that big beast there,” Oborny said, gesturing to the mixer.
To get her customers’ orders out by Friday, Oborny will wake up at 4 a.m. or earlier two days a week and start baking. She balances orders between the oven, cooling rack, refrigerator, and tables in her shed up until they’re picked up.
“It’s a lot to keep track of even on a slow day,” Oborny said Friday.
But it pays in the satisfaction of both her and her customers, some of whom order every week.