Old Heidelberg German Bakery serves up bread with attitude. No soft-spongy white “sandwich loaves” here. This is bread you can chew on. Staff of life stuff.
Seedless light rye, coarse rye, hard rolls, chewy, bagel-like pretzels – traditional German breads the Laukenmann family has been serving to Phoenicians for more than a half-century.
Chris Laukenmann, left, and her sister Andrea Keehn serve up traditional German baked goods and groceries at the family’s Old Heidelberg German Bakery. They’ll be offering a small selection of traditional European Easter chocolates and cookies this season. Chris owns the bakery, which her and Keehn’s parents started in 1969 (photo by Marjorie Rice).
Heinz and Eleonore Laukenmann, who operated a bakery in Germany, near Stuttgart, before immigrating here in 1968, opened the local bakery a year after moving here. They initially opened it on Seventh Street next door to Schreiner’s Fine Sausage.
It seems like a location marriage made in heaven for customers, but four years later the Laukenmanns moved to a new store at Camelback and Seventh Street. Their customers followed – many of them European immigrants and Canadian snowbirds with European roots that longed for an authentic taste of home.
The family bought the current location, on Indian School Road at 22nd Street, in 1995, transforming it from offices to a combination bakery and small grocery store. Heinz and Eleonore’s daughters, Chris Laukenmann and Andrea Keehn, and son Tom Laukenmann worked in the family business for decades. Tom started training at age 16 with his dad and is still baking there at age 64, turning out all those fragrant loaves with just one helper. Andrea has retired, but frequently helps out at the store. Her daughter, Emily, works behind the counter. Chris bought the company five years ago.
Tom’s seedless light rye, in rounds and long loaves, is the best-seller. Customers know to come in early because popular items can sell out.
Other bakery favorites include palm leaves, almond horns, macaroons and strudel.
While some bakeries have expanded with sandwiches and other prepared food, the Laukenmanns decided to offer groceries instead. It was a response to customer conversations, Andrea said. She said that “people would come in and say ‘I wish I could get …’”
Customers can pick up pickles of all description, cookies, noodles, dumplings, gravy mixes, salad dressings, sauces, German mustards, sardines in mustard and all sorts of sauces. And lots of herring is available at Old Heidelberg.
If you’re cooking a German recipe, this is the place to go for ingredients that give it that authentic flavor, Andrea said. “Like German potato salad, with vinegar and oil. I’ve tried American vinegar; it just doesn’t work. It’s weird.”
So Old Heidelberg has a shelf packed with a variety of German vinegars.
You can pack a mean picnic from the bakery and grocery shelves. Start with bread, then head to the cold counter for brie and camembert. And try sausages from Stiglmeier Sausage Co. in Illinois. The Laukenmanns discovered the company on a visit to Chicago, Andrea said.
Heidelberg’s sausages all are fully cooked, though some, like the pork and veal brats, benefit from grilling. Choose from veal bologna, blood sausage, fresh liver sausage made with calves liver and goose liver, and smoked pork belly, ready to slice and eat. (Many of these products are seasonal, only available in the winter.)
If some of the names aren’t familiar, ask. They’re happy to explain.
One item that might not be familiar to non-Europeans is crackling fat with fried onions. Sounds awful but ambrosia to those who have acquired the taste of this pure pork fat. It substitutes for butter in frying, and for a true taste of Germany, try it spread on rye bread or thin slices of Sonnenblumenbrod (thin dark bread packed with sunflower seeds), with a sprinkling of salt and pepper.
Take a final turn in the grocery area for cookies and chocolates for dessert (to go with the strudel and macaroons) and you’re ready for a feast.
Old Heidelberg German Bakery is located at 2210 E. Indian School Road. It is open from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. For information, call 602-224-9877.
I pick up most of my bread and cakes there. For me it’s a longer drive, but it’s worth it.
My mother would take us there at a young age. When she got older we would take her there. When she could no longer make the trip I would stop in and get her favorites. She passed away in 2020. I still go get her favorites. Today I am excited to pick up our usual treats. I have watched the sisters grow up with every trip we take to their wonderful bakery.