My mom was a great scratch baker, but we did get the occasional bakery treat when I was growing up — especially if we begged enough as we were walking by the shop!
To this day, I think bakeries are the best-smelling places around. I find that magical combination of spicy ginger, sweet cookies and cakes, and the warm, yeasty smell of baking bread positively intoxicating, and I’m not alone.
Credit: Bill King
Credit: Bill King
My friend Dan Pelletier looks back fondly on his first visits to Henri’s Bakery & Deli in Buckhead. “The smell on entering was worth the trip, regardless of what I purchased,” he said.
However, for those of us who grew up in Athens or attended the University of Georgia, A&A Bakery, located downtown for decades, was, as Frazier Moore put it: “the best-smelling spot on God’s green earth.”
Credit: Hargrett Library
Credit: Hargrett Library
And, noted Nancy Garner Cerrato, “You could smell the bakery long before you walked in the door.”
At certain hours in Athens, we probably had the best-smelling downtown around. In addition to A&A, Roslyn Marlow Wise said, you were “wrapped in the heavenly aroma of bread baking at Benson’s,” which made loaves of sliced white bread sold in local grocery stores.
Credit: Cami Fowler
Credit: Cami Fowler
The first doughnuts I ever had were the glazed beauties from A&A that Dad used to bring home — left over from the break room at the branch bank he managed. A&A’s doughnuts were very popular, but so was just about everything else they made. Many families that attended church in the vicinity of downtown Athens swung by A&A after services on Sunday mornings to pick up some treats, and it wasn’t uncommon for kids to skip out on Sunday school to sneak over there.
A&A had a big presence at UGA, too. My wife, Leslie, recalls going there for brownies after she started at the university, and A&A cheese straws were a sorority and fraternity mainstay. Michael Simpson remembers stopping by on his way to class for the “best cinnamon roll I ever tasted. Often the rolls were still warm. Delicious beyond belief.”
Even after we had graduated, when we were back in town visiting my family, Leslie and I would drop by A&A for some of their delicious, fragrant gingerbread men. As Annette Feather recalled, “Nobody could bake gingerbread men like they could. My daughter knew she had done something extra special when I would bring them home to her.”
Credit: Tom McConnell
Credit: Tom McConnell
A&A also was the local go-to spot for birthday and wedding cakes. Many a little girl in Athens was feted with A&A’s legendary doll cakes, which featured a real doll in the middle, with the cake and icing around her shaped and decorated to look like her hooped-skirt ballgown. The bakery also did special occasion cakes, such as the five-tiered masterpiece (complete with the arch on top) for the UGA Alumni Society’s 150th birthday in 1984.
And A&A owner Robbie Lee Stone “made cakes that appeared in one of Kenny Rogers’ ‘Gambler’ movies,” recalled his granddaughter, Melissa Vickers.
It wasn’t all about sweets, either. “The main thing I remember about A&A,” Suzanne Carter said, “was salt-rising bread. My grandmother and our entire family absolutely loved it. It made delicious toast with butter and jam — the perfect combination of slightly salty bread with the sweetness of the jelly.”
Meanwhile, near our home in Athens’ Five Points district, another bakery, Stone’s Ideal, was run by Herschel Stone, brother of A&A’s owner. Betz Lowery Tillitski remembers her favorites there were lady locks (also known as cream horns), while her sister preferred their chocolate bonbons. Stone’s closed around the end of 1964, but, Tillitski said, “I never forgot that tiny, warm and inviting shop.”
After I’d graduated, Leslie was still at UGA and a bakery called Black Forest opened near where she lived, in a former gas station across the street from the U.S. Navy Supply Corps School (now UGA’s health sciences campus). I remember us going into it shortly after it opened — first time I ever had pralines!
Credit: AJC
Credit: AJC
Once we had married and settled in Decatur, we went to the bakery in the Rich’s department store at the old North DeKalb Mall for birthday cakes. Recalled Mark Gunter: “They had the best chocolate-covered doughnuts and chocolate-covered, cream-filled eclairs. And their German chocolate cakes, too. And their coconut cake!” Rodney Owen said the Rich’s shops “were the best bakery in Atlanta during the 1970s.”
Sometimes, for lunch, I’d go by Le Gourmet bakery in the Peachtree Battle shopping center, because they had great sandwiches. I remember one day in the early 1990s standing in line there behind pitcher Tom Glavine of the Braves, then one of the biggest stars in baseball. I was impressed that, while he was making up his mind, he allowed other customers to go in front of him.
Credit: Bill King
Credit: Bill King
In the 2000s, we discovered Southern Sweets, located in a warehouse district near Decatur. Its old fashion chocolate cake (which actually turns out to be vegan!) has graced quite a few family birthday celebrations, and its spiced rustic apple pie is sublime.
Also, Leslie and our daughter, Olivia, are longtime fans of Alon’s in Morningside. When Olivia recently was visiting from North Carolina, they stopped by Alon’s and brought home a bag of treats, including croissants, a shokolina cake, a tiramisu torte and a kouign-amann (a sweet pastry made with multiple layers of laminated dough).
Credit: Bill King
Credit: Bill King
And on a recent visit to my hometown, I stopped by Independent Baking Co. in Five Points, known primarily for its breads and pastries. I brought back several varieties of bread, including a fantastic French country loaf that was especially good toasted.
Meanwhile, back around the holidays, Leslie had ordered some chocolate chunk cookies for a visit by our son, Bill, and his family. Our granddaughter Nora wasn’t yet 3 years old at the time, and we gave her half of one of the treats. It was her very first chocolate cookie (mostly, she’d had vanilla wafers).
Credit: Bill King
Credit: Bill King
“You’re eating your cookie!” said Jenny, her mom. Nora corrected her: “Chocolate cookie.”
I think next time they visit, we’re going to have to go to a bakery and let Nora make some sweet childhood memories of her own.
For many more bakery memories, go to billkingquickcuts.wordpress.com. Bill King can be reached at junkyardblawg@gmail.com.
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