Renee Backer locations desserts within the show cupboard at Backer’s Pastry Store in Salt Lake Metropolis on Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2022. Laura Seitz, Deseret Information
Sooner or later, so the story goes, a honey bee discovered its method into Mrs. Backer’s Pastry Store on South Temple.
Considering it had hit sudden pay grime, the bee made a beeline, because it had been, for one in every of Mrs. Backer’s well-known desserts embellished by buttercream flowers, hovered for a second, then dove into the tube rose on prime.
Of all of the compliments Utah’s oldest household bakery has obtained — and there have been hundreds through the years — from film stars and governors and Jazz gamers and church leaders and extra moms of the bride than you may depend — Marty Backer thinks that one is perhaps probably the most flattering.
“It thought it may go straight down and get the nectar,” he says.
* * *
Bakeries come and bakeries go, however not this one. Mrs. Backer’s has bought the identical pastries from the identical location in the identical metropolis since 1941. It’s been at 434 E. South Temple for thus lengthy the constructing is on the Nationwide Register of Historic Locations. It couldn’t transfer if it needed to.
At that, Mrs. Backer’s is a mere toddler in comparison with the household’s lengthy relationship with baking. The Backers first opened a bakery in northwest Germany within the village of Dornum on or concerning the yr 1200, some 800 years in the past. The household surname — “backer” is “baker” in German — is believed to return from what they did for a dwelling.
The supply for the above anecdote is Marty’s grandfather, Gerhard Backer, who got here to America together with his spouse Henrietta in 1924 and introduced the household commerce with him. As a conscript within the German military throughout World Battle I, Gerhard served behind the traces, baking bread to feed the troops. He returned to Dornum after the conflict, however runaway inflation brought about him and Henrietta to to migrate to America, the place Henrietta had two brothers to sponsor them.
Gerhard promptly opened the West Excessive Bakery — situated throughout from West Excessive College. When his oldest son, Martin, got here of age, he branched out and opened Mrs. Backer’s on South Temple in 1941 — the title is a tribute to Martin’s mom, who stepped in and set Gerhard straight when he hedged on loaning Martin the cash he wanted to get began.
Mrs. Backer’s has paid homage to her ever since.
Marty Backer, Martin’s son, is the third-generation proprietor of Mrs. Backer’s, alongside together with his spouse, Renee (who can also be Mrs. Backer however not the Mrs. Backer). The fourth era is ready within the wings: Marty and Renee’s kids, Stefanie and Wade, who run the bakery full time now that Marty and Renee are of their 70s and easing off a bit.
The key to Mrs. Backer’s endurance? “Being totally different,” says Marty. “Anyone could make a cake, however the stuff we make, we hope, is best tasting and higher wanting and so forth.”
They make a spectacular meat pie that has been on the menu since Gerhard introduced the recipe from the previous nation, and so they promote plenty of cookies and french pastries, however greater than something, it’s their colourful flowers, constructed from a intently guarded buttercream icing recipe, that set them aside.
The flowers had been there from the store’s starting, but it surely wasn’t till 1969 that the artistry actually took off. Marty had simply returned from a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, releasing up his father to handcraft a variety of customized metallic adorning tubes so he may make ornate, lifelike flowers. Martin Backer constructed about 15 tubes in all, starting with the rose and ending with the coup de grace — the daffodil.
“As a result of he wanted that trumpet,” says Marty, “the daffodil makes an actual assertion.”
The timing was good, as a result of simply as grocery store bakeries had been proliferating and working mom-and-pop shops out of enterprise, Mrs. Backer’s needed to begin including extra staff.
They barely marketed, however phrase of mouth was greater than adequate. When you get Marty and Renee — who met when she obtained a job at Mrs. Backer’s to assist pay for faculty — speaking about people-you’ve-heard-of they’ve made deluxe desserts for, pull up a chair.
“Oh, we may drop names everywhere,” says Renee, as she and Marty begin clicking them off: Roma Downey, Geena Davis, Stefanie Powers, Gary Herbert, Gail Miller, Karl Malone and a bunch of different Jazz gamers, Cal Rampton, Scott Anderson, Jeff Judkins, Kem Gardner, Orrin Hatch, Mitt Romney, Larry King.
Starting with David O. McKay, for years they made a cake for each Latter-day Saint church president’s birthday.
The most important one they’ve ever made was for a Greek wedding ceremony. The bride requested for a cake 6 toes excessive. It price $700. Within the Seventies.
The tubes Martin Backer long-established again in 1969 are nonetheless used to make the deluxe flowers — and solely by a Backer. After Martin retired, Marty did all of the flowers. Now, Stefanie is the artist, with occasional assist from her brother Wade.
That is partly as a result of utilizing the tubes is “a discovered artwork,” and in addition for proprietary causes. “When Dad developed these tubes he didn’t need everybody to know the way it was carried out,” says Marty, “so we’ve kinda stored it within the household.”
And so it goes for the Backers. Eight hundred years of perpetual baking and counting. The previous people again in Dornum can be proud.