People are passionate about one thing in this Wisconsin town: kringle. They hold kringle taste-testing contests. They lure would-be conventioneers with free samples. There was even a lawsuit in which a local bakery accused an Internet company of cybersquatting on the domain name: racinekringle.com. (While the suit is pending, the site is inactive.)
What’s the fuss?
If you have to ask, you’ve never tasted it. Kringle is a Danish pastry stuffed with fruit or nuts or some concoction bored bakers dream up on slow overnight shifts, though that description reduces it to just another high-calorie indulgence.
Kringle is an edible coat of arms that speaks to Racine’s heritage as America’s ersatz Danish capital. Today, bakeries named Larsen, Bendtsen and Lehmann are among those fighting for kringle supremacy, not just among the city’s 82,000 citizens but around the country. Combined, they ship hundreds of thousands of kringles a year including special deliveries to the White House.
Kringle is not a particularly elegant-looking thing. It has a homemade, imperfect quality about it, oval-shaped like a slightly overtrodden racetrack.
It’s the taste of the feather-light butter pastry–created by Danes, enhanced by Austrians and modified by Americans–that’s responsible for the kind of allegiance that prompted one woman to write O & H Danish Bakery: “When my boyfriend sent me a kringle from Racine, I knew he was serious about our relationship.”
A pastry with a past
Eric Olesen, an owner of the O&H, one of Racine’s busiest shops, is a kind of Danish pastry historian. The story of kringle, he said, is one that began in Denmark when bakers went on strike for wages instead of simply room and board. Owners resisted and hired Austrian replacement workers who introduced their own method of rolling fat into a very lean type of dough and folding it over repeatedly to create dozens of delicate layers. The flaky pastry is called weinerbrod or Vienna bread. When the strike was settled, Danish bakers returned to the kitchen and adopted the technique.
Kringle in pretzel-shaped form came to Wisconsin when a huge wave of Danish immigrants arrived in the late 1880s. Racine bakers adopted the flat ring shape in the 1940s to conform to local tastes. Less overlapping dough meant filling would be in every slice. And Americans wanted lots of it, a shift from European tastes.
Olesen said the focal point of Danish pastry is the pastry itself, the Vienna bread. The filling was always intended to be a complement to the pastry.
“Here in the United States, we Americans want as much as can get inside anything we buy, whether it’s a pastry like kringle, a sandwich, hamburger or filled doughnut,” Olesen said. “We lose our focus on the pastry itself.”
The other American influence on kringle has been the proliferation of fillings. In its original imported state, there was only one flavor: almond. Today’s bakeries showcase dozens. Lehmann’s Bakery offers more than 30 flavors. The most imaginative may be banana split, a combination of banana-flavored custard, strawberry and pineapple filling, chocolate icing, walnuts and cherries conjured up by the staff one evening, according to Lehmann’s head baker Charles Hess. Pecan, though, is the favorite across the board.
Kringle passion
The stories that show the lengths some devotees go to for kringle are legendary. Mike Heyer of Racine Danish Kringle said he’s heard about delivery drivers who steal kringles and give customers empty boxes.
“The most unusual was a woman who said she received a box from us,” Heyer said. “Someone had stolen the kringle and replaced it with extension cords.”
Eric Olesen’s most memorable customer was a woman flying from Los Angeles to New York:
“She had a stopover in Chicago so she rented a car, drove to Racine and ordered as many kringles as could fit in her suitcase.”
Swearing their allegiance
For the bakers of Racine, there’s more than enough business to go around. Most have been in the family business for decades; some are on their third and fourth generation.
What distinguishes each baker’s kringle is technique, said Heyer. How much time to mix the dough, how many folds, how long to rest and cool the dough.
“Everyone’s got their own method.” he said. “The recipe is not that difficult. It’s the techniques that go along with it.”
Who bakes the best? Locals, who pay about $5 a kringle, swear their allegiance to one bakery or another. Ask the baker and you’ll get an answer that speaks to Racine’s kitchen camaraderie.
“It’s like beer,” said Hess of Lehmann’s. “Everyone has his own preference, but they all do a good job.”
If Hess won’t commit, leave it to the Racine Jaycees to force the issue. One summer they held a Kringle blind taste test. But in the spirit of sportsmanship, more than one Racine bakery walked off with a prize.
And everyone went home happy.
Where to find kringle in Racine
Larsen Bakery, 3311 Washington Ave., larsenbakery.com, 262-633-4298
O+H Danish Bakery, 1841 Douglas Ave., 866-637-8895, www.ohdanishbakery.com
Lehmann’s Bakery, 2200 16th St., 800-607-8721, lehmanns.com
Bendtsen’s Bakery, 3200 Washington Ave., 262-633-0365, bendtsensbakery.com
Racine Danish Kringle, 2529 Golf Rd., 800-432-6474, kringle.com
