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Oral Histories

The SFA oral history program documents life stories from the American South. Collecting these stories, we honor the people whose labor defines the region. If you would like to contribute to SFA’s oral history collections, please send your ideas for oral history along with your CV or Resume and a portfolio of prior oral history work to info@southernfoodways.org.

< Back to Oral History project: The Keepers of Kolaches: The Evolutions of Texas-Czech Baking

< Back to Oral History project: Southern Baking

ORAL HISTORY

Denise Mazal

Love Kolaches

The daughter of an accomplished chef, Denise Mazal was born in Prague in the 1950s, and despite living abroad for over forty years remains a proud ambassador of Czech culture. While cooking runs in her blood, she didn’t pursue it professionally until following her defection when work necessities pushed her to seek alternative sources of income. She soon found herself apprenticing in fine kitchens in Paris and Munich until the promise of a job in Colorado, made possible through the help of actor Steve Martin, brought her to the United States. Having met her husband in Boulder, they sought a warmer climate in the Texas Hill Country town of Boerne, where she opened an acclaimed restaurant called Little Gretel that came to include a shop specializing in authentic Czech kolaches. “Kolach is a symbol,” she told writer Jeff Siegel in 2014. “Kolach is a small pastry, but to every Czech, it represents family…”

Date of interview:
2023-05-20

Interviewer:
Evan Stern

Photographer:
Matthew Busch

Download Transcript

“

“I’ve been always proud of every single kolache I ever made…You basically have to become that kolach…You just have to indulge. You have to bring that soul into them… It’s almost like—knitting a blanket for somebody who goes through some illness, and in every stitch, you put that wish that person will get better. It was same with for me making wedding kolaches. When I was pressing those rounds and filling them up, just wishing—sending the wishes to the new-weds, the best wishes.” - Denise Mazal

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