Cindy Day

JASPER, Tenn. — A piping hot Tracy City tradition has found a home in Marion County, says Cindy Day, owner of Dutch Maid Bakery stores in Grundy County and now Jasper.

Mrs. Day moved from Florida to Tennessee to buy the Tracy City bakery three years ago, she said.

“The reason I came to Jasper was because I had a person come up there to the bakery and ask me how come I did not open a facility in Jasper,” she said after delivering a batch of fresh gingerbread men to the new store.

She told the man she’d only consider an older building with lots of traffic and a good location.

“Two years later — didn’t see him for all that time — he walks back in the door and says, ‘I’ve got the perfect place for you,’” she said.

Three months of renovation returned the building on the Marion County Courthouse square to its original look inside, she said. She wants the bakery and its second home to stay true to history.

In the 1880s, John Baggenstoss, a master chef from Switzerland, came to Grundy County’s Swiss colony of Gruetli where he started working as a baker. Mr. Baggenstoss and his six sons started the bakery in Tracy City in 1902, according to Dutch Maid’s Web site. The “Brothers Baggenstoss” ran the bakery until 1992 when it was purchased by family friends Lynn and Nelda Craig.

Mrs. Day, a baker for Publix Food stores in Florida when she bought the bakery, said she follows the recipes Mr. Baggenstoss brought from Switzerland well over a century ago.

C.G. Parsons, the store manager in Jasper, said business has boomed in the first few weeks.

“Sales have actually been better” than in Tracy City, Ms. Parsons said.

Customer Jeannine Raulston, a retired Marion County teacher, said she first tasted Dutch Maid goods when her father brought them home 50 years ago.

In the 1950s, her father bought sugarplum cakes from Mr. Baggenstoss to give to the employees of his chicken hatchery, Ms. Raulston said.

“I remember he’d buy them by the case to give people,” she said.