Behind the Counter

The owner of The Crooked Cup reveals his secrets about the Kolache

The Kolache is a Czech pastry that gained its popularity in America in the Czech belt in Texas. It has recently spread across the country with increasing buzz about the flaky, filled pastry. The Crooked Cup in Fort Collins, Colorado serves their version of a kolache and it is amazing. I talked to the owner of The Crooked Cup, Gabriel, about his baking process and his inventive kolaches.

Q: Is there a special process for baking at a high altitude?

A: There are no specifically general answer for this unfortunately, each item has ingredients that react differently to different changes. Higher flour content and a different temperature are suitable changes for many things that we bake, but not all.

Q: How do you make your pastries distinct from the other pastry shops in Old Town?

A: We make ours distinct both by hand crafting small batches and by the fact that we have a culinary trained pastry chef at the helm of everything. Most coffee houses do not have a full bakery, but rather they purchase par baked items and finish them off in an oven.

Q: What would you say is your most popular pastry?

A: Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Kolaches. If you combine all 4 kolache flavors we are extremely close to selling our 100,000th! This will happen sometime in early October.

Q: How did you hear about the Kolache and decide to feature that in your pastry case?

A: My best friend (also a CSU alumni and now a Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and I were talking about new and interesting items that no coffee houses had upon our opening. He told me about the traditional Czech version and I tweaked the dough and fillings until we had a product that I was happy with.

Q: When did you eat your first Kolache?

A:3 days before we opened :)

Q: Are there other flavors that you are experimenting with for your Kolaches?

A: Currently we have a few on the docket: Biscuits & Gravy Kolache; Egg, Asparagus & Hollandaise Kolache; and a Cinnamon Roll/Kolache hybrid.

Q: What is your ideal customer like?

A: Smiling when they leave :)