Haby's Alsatian Bakery

Haby's Alsatian Bakery traces to 1940, when Stanley Haby opened it in Castroville, the Texas town founded in 1844 by Alsatian settlers and known locally as the Little Alsace of Texas. Sammy and Yvonne Tschirhart bought the bakery from Haby in 1974, remodeled it and expanded its selection of baked goods; a further expansion completed in 1983 gave the building the European Alsatian-style architecture it carries today. The bakery's case holds coffee cakes, strudels and a large range of yeast breads — sandwich, wheat, rye, pumpernickel and pumpkin — alongside doughnuts, honey buns, cinnamon rolls, tortillas and dinner rolls, plus pan dulce, molasses cookies, empanadas and cakes made to family recipes. Castroville's Alsatian heritage, brought by Catholic farmer-settlers from the Alsace region of France, remains visible in the town's building style and in the bakery's own name and look. The business has stayed in continuous operation since Haby founded it, changing hands only once, to the Tschirhart family, in over eight decades.