Chicken Salad for Days at The Ole Country Bakery in Brooksville, Mississippi.

Can two grown adults be satisfied by a single chicken salad sandwich? At The Ole Country Bakery in Brooksville, Mississippi, Grav and I found one worthy of the highest celebration.

Fairy Tale Delights at Briar Rose Bakery in Farmington.

Miniature pies are adorable. Imagine a place, though, where the adorable pies are outdone by the surroundings, a country cottage in the Ozarks where delectable savory and sweet treats co-exist side by side. Welcome... to the Briar Rose Zone.

Delta Doughnuts - Lybrand's Bakery in Pine Bluff Dates Back to 1940.

The former Main Street mainstay at the intersection of Arkansas's Timberland and Delta has flourished through the generations. Let's visit Lybrand's Bakery in Pine Bluff.

Sweets to Eat: Paul's Bakery in Van Buren.

Since 1959, Paul's Bakery has fed doughnuts, cakes and other sweet treats to generations in Van Buren. Let's take a look inside.

The Scent of Memory: Klappenbach Bakery.

Klappenbach Bakery in 2010. (Kat Robinson)

This is one in a series on historical restaurants in the state of Arkansas. For a look at the Arkansas restaurant timeline, click here.

Fordyce is known for three things – Paul “Bear” Bryant, the Redbugs and Klappenbach Bakery. They represent three ideals: determination, tenacity and community.

Well, the Redbugs are still playing, and Bear Bryant’s legacy is still held dear. But Klappenbach Bakery is now a delicious and fondly favored memory.

For 36 years, the red brick bakery stood sentinel along a stretch of pavement downtown, not far from the railroad tracks. It was a great spot for hot coffee, warm pastries and sweet conversations. Past the pastry cases in the foyer, one would enter a red-washed room decorated with gas station memorabilia and mismatched tables, often packed with the guys from down the street, or local farmers shooting the breeze, or the local civic club. There were lunches taken here, many – but it was breakfast where the place really shined, home to buttery Danish and tiny miniature doughnuts. And oh golly, the monkey bread.

The bakery’s story started 2000 miles away, in the burg of Walla Walla, WA. It began its Arkansas chapter in 1975, when Norman and Lee Klappenbach moved to Fordyce (Lee was originally from Dallas County). Their son Paul was still a kid, ten or eleven years old, when they started up the little bakery that grew a huge following. The family started baking up fresh pastries, bread and doughnuts in the area because fresh baked goods weren’t locally available. It didn’t take long for folks to find them… following the aroma of cinnamon rolls that would waft blocks away. By the time the Klappenbachs threw in the towel in 2011, they averaged 75 people each day for lunch – an impressive ratio for a town of just 5000 people.

Breakfast, lunch… a community can live on that. It can thrive on baked goods, though, and Klappenbach has plenty: miniature doughnuts for a quarter apiece, big fat fresh loaves of bread, the aforementioned monkey bread, fritters and cinnamon rolls, raisin bread, pies, brownies, cupcakes, pecan rolls, bear claws, cookies and cakes. In 1991 the bakery started doing mail-order, and the orders started rolling in from all over the country – first from ex-pats who wanted a taste of home, then from folks who were lucky enough to share in that bounty, then from people who’d never stepped foot in Arkansas but had read about the place in Southern Living.

It became tradition for travelers passing through town on Highway 167 to make it their pit shop – and for some, like myself, it became a culinary destination. I used to find reasons to divert up to an hour off my path just to pick up a moist cake or a box of brownies to take with me wherever I was going. Long before culinary tourism became a “thing,” there were so many practicing that art with their own paths through south central Arkansas.

When a fire shut down the bakery in 2009, we all feared the end had come and eulogized our happy spot in town. But we were treated to a coda, a little window of opportunity, when the place reopened a few months later. For one more year, there were tiny doughnuts and massive cinnamon rolls again.

And then it was over. Norman Klappenbach was 80, his wife Lee 77, and they were done. Son Paul was 47. He’d spent seven years working 65 hours a week to keep the bakery open, but it just wasn’t in him anymore. With no one else left to take up the reins of business, the bakery shut its doors October 1st of 2011.

There’s still no replacement for that heavenly scent that would sometimes waft as far as the bypass. But there are good memories… and I keep hoping one day I’ll see mention somewhere that I can order a box of bread (three loaves, or a loaf and a cake) through the mail. I sure miss that monkey bread.

Red velvet doughnuts and more at PattiCakes Bakery.

• GRAV WELDON
• HEAVENLY EDIBLES: Pumpkin Spice & Red Velvet Doughnuts

Dropped by PattiCakes Friday morning. It’s terrible, I know — not the bakery, of course, but the fact that I haven’t been able to get up any of these fantastic photos of the place in the meantime. I entirely blame my lack of a reliable computer (sent it off to HP for a fix, this is my backup and my backup is one slow 1GB machine).

Of course, that means I’ve sorta kept a secret to myself, and that’s not right. It’s my job to share the little treasures I find along the way, even if I want to keep a helluva good Red Velvet cake doughnut to myself. Darn it.

Because that’s one of the magical items I found in the cases at PattiCakes Friday morning. Patti herself (that’s Patti Stobaugh, wife of Stoby’s founder David Stobaugh who also dropped in while we were there) allowed us to come back behind the counters and shoot away at the baked loveliness that awaited there, all while handling a steady stream of customers.

• GRAV WELDON

I’m familiar with many of the products; the Colossal Cinnamon Rolls the Russellville bakery’s been providing to that store are a must-have any time I’m up there for breakfast; the fudge I am required to pick up and share with my out-of-town friends during the holidays. Opening up a second bakery next to Stoby’s in Conway was a no-brainer, and I am so glad there’s one within an hour’s drive now. I mean, I love Russellville, but it’s not always easy to get away and hit the road just for fudge, ya know?

For its second day (PattiCakes Conway opened on November 11th), it was rolling. The new building is a cottage on the back end of the Stoby’s property, a lovely sage green and painted hardwood interior and a long bakery case full of fudge, pastries and cold salads through the center. The customer space is larger at this location, and the entire kitchen is open. There were several ladies working hard behind the counter, kneading dough and exchanging sheets of pastries from the oven.

• GRAV WELDON

Grav got back to the croissants, big six-inch or better crescents of golden buttery goodness that smelled powerfully wonderful; these are used for Stoby’s sandwiches and such in the restaurant

• GRAV WELDON

Of course, all the photos in the world can’t compare to having some of the fine and fantastic pastries actually sampled. We were on a very tight schedule - at least, we intended to be. We found ourselves in conversation with Patti and David for a half hour or more before we had to pull away and head to our next assignment. Coffee is available to go along with those pastries, four different varieties along with the traditional add-ins like half-and-half and sweeteners and cooler things like a choice of one of three flavored syrups. There are also soft drinks available. It’s a self-serve operation.

Grav tried out a blueberry scone and pronounced it finely textured with more than enough blueberries and enough heft to conquer breakfast. We both tried the two featured doughnuts of the day — a Pumpkin Spice doughnut and a Red Velvet doughnut. The Pumpkin Spice more than settles the craving for that particular flavor that’s been so hot recently. It’s more spice than pumpkin in my honest opinion, but that’s good, more of a spice cake doughnut with pumpkin overtones.

• KAT ROBINSON

That Red Velvet cake doughnut, though… oh dear Lord. Wow. I love Red Velvet Cake and figured it was either going to be a red doughnut or a cake in doughnut form. Instead, it was the consistency of a good cake doughnut with all the sweet cherryish flavor you get with Red Velvet Cake. Best of all, the icing was influenced with cream cheese rather than heavy with it, so you get the flavor of the cake all through each bite without anything being covered up with “OMG it’s CREAM CHEESE!” stickiness.

So that would have been good enough, but I have to tell you about the Brown Sugar Cinnamon Scone. It is unlike any scone I have ever had. It’s like a scone married a coffeecake and had sweet, buttery kids. Served up hot (the scones were still oven-hot when we got them) it was ideal and yet so different, a firm crispy crust on the outside and biscuit soft within. The only think I could think to make it better would be to apply fresh butter — I bet if you asked nicely that could happen.

• GRAV WELDON

Actually, what would have been better would have been to have had a photo of the scones. They had just come out of the oven, and the smooth motion of scones from baking sheet to cake plate to counter to bag to us was so smooth, neither of us got a good shot. And once we got them we couldn't keep ourselves from eating them. Wowsome.

So I’m gushing over the place. Yeah, I am. I’m sorry, I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to fine baked goods and I found two things at PattiCakes I have been craving ever since my visit. I want to go back up there, just wish my schedule would permit it. Sometime soon, yeah.

Anyway, PattiCakes’ Conway store can be found at 2106 Robinson Avenue (at Donaghey). You can call (501) 205-1969 or check out the website.