Zamykal Kolaches is owned by Jody Powers, originally from Fort Worth, Texas. Jody, whose mother was Czech and whose father was German, began baking kolaches in her early thirties as a way to preserve her Czech heritage and the art of making kolaches. “I figure being half Czech and Half German, I must have the “baking gene,” she says, laughingly.

Grandmother Zamykal, whose family, known as the Lev’s, immigrated from Czechoslovakia by way of Galveston and settled southwest of Houston in a community known as Flatonia. She married Charles Zamykal, also a Czech immigrant and raised their family on a farm between Moulton and Flatonia in the early 1900s. Teresa and Charles had six living children…Mary, Agnes, Bessie, Julia, Della, and Frank. In those days, the older girls worked along side Mother Zamykal, in the kitchen, while the younger girls had to help work the farm. Julia, Jody’s mother and one of the younger girls, never learned to bake kolaches. Jody went to her Aunt Agnes, the second eldest of the sisters, and sat down with her, paper and pen in hand. There was no recipe written anywhere; each of the older girls had learned and memorized while working with their mother. Jody wrote down every word as Aunt Agnes recalled the recipe and went home to try her hand at making kolaches. At first, she failed miserably, but she never gave up and over the years the kolaches got better and better. Most of Jody’s kolache baking technique evolved through trial and error. Some of her best tricks for light and fluffy kolaches were learned by accident.

“It’s not just having the right recipe; it’s learning how to FEEL the dough” and that can take years.

In the year 2001, Jody decided to open a kolache bakery in a little town she had fallen in love with called Calvert, Texas. Her business background of thirteen years was in the multi-family housing industry, more specifically in active retirement communities. For three years Jody worked in her spare time perfecting her dough and formulating her gourmet fillings. She used her senior residents at the community as guinea pigs, bringing kolaches, batch after batch, for them to try. In 2004, when the time was right, she gave her notice and set out for Calvert, Texas.

As a tribute to her grandmother, Jody named the shop Zamykal Kolaches. “I hope that both my Mother and Father, as well as Grandmother Zamykal are looking down from Heaven with approval”, Jody says. “I work very hard to make a product that they would have been proud of.”

Enjoy, enjoy!