It was thirty years ago when I first discovered Miller’s
Bakery in Holmes County, Ohio.
I was on my way to that quintessentially Amish town of Charm,
driving southeast on Ohio
557. I saw a gravel lane leading off to
the right, and beside it there was a small sign for the bakery. I turned onto the lane, drove up a steep
hill, and parked with a half-dozen Amish buggies in front of the store. It was nine in the morning, and most of the
bakery’s business was finished. However,
there was one lonely maple-cinnamon bun left in the display case, and I bought
it, thinking that I needed to get back on the road to Charm. It was a little-known store, in an
out-of-the-way location, and the sign that had directed me to it was small and
unassuming. A lot of local Amish people
knew about the bakery, but obviously few English people had been stopping
there. By the time I had eaten the
maple-cinnamon bun, I knew I had discovered a treasure.
Inside, the ceilings were low. There were two skylights, but most of the
illumination came from old-fashioned gas mantles hung from the ceiling. You may know this type of lamp, if you are
familiar with Coleman camping lanterns.
First, you tie a small silk bag to the fitting of the gas pipe. Then with the gas turned off, you touch a
match to the silk and burn it to ash.
The mantle of ash hangs loosely from the fitting, if you don’t make too
much of a draft near it, and when you turn the gas on and light a flame, the
ash puffs out round, and it glows bright white.
In the bakery, there were half a dozen such gas mantles hissing hot with
light in the ceiling that day, and they provided enough light to move around,
but not much more. Many Amish people
today still use this type of lighting in their homes and businesses. It is good light, for the most part, and best
of all for the Amish, it is not electric.
Although that was thirty years ago, the bakery still employs
those gas lamps. The lighting in the
store is still rather dim and old fashioned.
But changes have come, and the bakery operates now with extended hours
to accommodate the tourists who tend to awake late in the morning and who
remain interested in baked goods well into the afternoons. Most Amish customers have cleared out of
there by nine in the morning, but then the tourist business picks up. You see, over the years, traffic on the lane
has changed from that of Amish buggies, to mostly English cars, because that
little bakery has now been “discovered.”
And the sign out by the road is now large and prominent. The bakery is open from 7 AM to 5 PM,
and the selection of baked goods is impressive, compared to the simple fare
they offered in years gone by. There are
ten types of bread, eight varieties of cheese tarts, sixteen kinds of cookies,
and nine flavors of fry pies, not to mention those maple-cinnamon rolls. From long experience, I can tell you that
they are all astonishingly delicious.
If you wish to find Miller’s Bakery, drive east out of Millersburg
on Routes 62/39. Before you get to Berlin, turn right (south) on Ohio 557 and slow down. Watch for the sign after the tourist trap at
the dogleg turn. Expect that you might
have to wait for a parking spot. And if
you intend to buy something to eat right there, bring a jug of milk or a
thermos of coffee, because you’ll want to wash it down after you have eaten
it. The food is just too rich to linger
on the palette for very long. Then plan
your budget with a little extra money that day.
Once you have tasted the first maple-cinnamon bun, the Millers know well
that you’ll want to buy more.
And you shouldn’t be surprised that the Millers keep the
baking underway, pretty much all day long.
After all, this is Amish commerce in a county overrun with tourism. My biggest surprise is that the prices are
still so reasonably low. And my best
advice to travelers? Get there before
too many more tourists find the place.
Hopefully, by the time you do, they will not yet have put in electric
lights. But hurry. Modernization is coming quickly. Inside the door, the Millers now have color
brochures advertising “De Good Ole Fashioned Bakin.”
Color brochures? Yes,
and with a telephone number: (330)
893-3002. Go figure.
Labels: Amish, Amish Culture, Amish-Country Mysteries, Holmes County, P. L. Gaus