Missouri: The Freund Baking Company

KETC in St. Louis is compiling a site of stories of its Jewish community. The project is an outgrowth of the documentary, The Jewish Americans, and intended to complement it. There are some two dozen stories online now.

The project actively seeks appropriate stories and photographs about the Jewish experience in St. Louis.

The latest one, by Gladis Barker, is here.

Back in the 1850’s when Mrs. Moritz Freund baked Bohemian rye bread for her South St. Louis neighbors, she had no inkling she was starting an institution that was to become a lasting part of St. Louis tradition. Freund Olde Tyme Rye Bread – baked according to Mrs. Freund’s Old World recipe – has been part of the social history of St. Louis. One interesting fact was that Mrs. Freund oven was heated by cordwood supplied by a bearded, struggling farmer who was later to become President of the United States – Ulysses S. Grant!

Her bread was welcomed by the Union Army soldiers at Jefferson Barracks during the Civil War, and by succeeding generations of soldiers until the post was closed after World War II. ...

Do read the rest of this four-generation story and the others on the website.