I actually think they're making a comeback, in the New York area anyway.

Stewie, I heard this exact lament three years ago. It was a discussion between two NC transplants. They had both moved to town (years apart), and one of the first things they asked the locals was "where is the bakery?" They were met with blank stares, or "You mean Ukrop's?" (Ukrop's is a grocery store.) We do have one bakery, at least, and it's old school, but I guess I've never been a bakery person. Don't forget, I'm only a few hours up tobacco road from you.

It sounds like a neat project. I'd watch it too.

We have some bakeries here, I just wish that I could get a good New York hard roll. Not a frickin' kaiser roll, a hard roll. As far as I can tell, they don't exist outside of NY/NJ.

The ones I'm remembering were in the northern reaches of the US, actually. Michigan, Wisconsin, Chicago, DC and New York, specifically.

I'm guessing that the demise of the bakery began perhaps in the early 1980s, when the bagel's popularity spread to the interior of the country. Donuts were out of fashion, as "healthy" bagels took over.

Here, I will use this thread to give somebody the idea for a wonderful children's picture book. I started it a couple times, never finished it and now I am handing it right over to somebody who can use it. I came up with it in Baltimore in the early 90s, when my kids and I walked over to our neighborhood bakery for one of their big chalky cookies with smiley faces on them only to find a handwritten note that they would be closed for a week, since they had gone down the ocean, hon. My toddler son was very sad: he really loved the bakery ladies, who were large and friendly and wore aprons smudged with flour.

Therefore, picture book: The Bakery Ladies Go To The Beach
where, of course, they make cookies and cakes out of sand. Also, possibly solve a crime. Go wild!

I agree, there used to be many more, and I really miss them too. One of my fondest childhood memories was getting bakery boxes on Sunday mornings - my grandmother brought them home on her way home from church, or one of us went to get them. We got a mix of crumb buns and cinnamon buns. Our bakeries were Friedman's and Guttenplans'.

They went out of business around 1990ish, I think. In the last decade, my family has started taking vacations in Ocean City, NJ, where I was overjoyed to discover they still have two wonderful old-school family bakeries: Ward's Pastry and Dot's Pastry. The first time I walked into Ward's I almost fell over from the force of the memories the aroma called up: the moist air fragrant with yeast, cinnamon, and sugar. I make a point of getting a big box of stuff there every year to share with the family.

Supermarket bakeries can't hold a candle. I don't buy from them any more, because most things are so flavorless, cooked with shortening and mass-manufactured frozen dough and very one-note. A proper bakery has doughnuts, cinnamon buns, sticky buns (with and without nuts), birthday cakes, bread, cupcakes, those big white cookies with a red dollop of jam in the middle, and Italian cookies.

YES! Italian cookies! That's what I'd been trying to remember!

Also, mgl, the chalky smiley-face cookie is also a marker of the type of bakery I'm talkin' about.

My fondest bakery memories are actually from Skokie, IL, which my family would stop at when traveling between Wisconsin and Michigan. There was an adjoining deli, as I recall, and so we'd have corned beef sandwiches and a pickle from a barrel, then walk through the adjoining door for Italian butter cookies.

Damn, I'm hungry.

Kaufman's! I found it! Now take me there, please.

We used to stop at a bakery on the way home from high school. There's a facebook page for its fans, and of course I joined. My sisters and I can describe their sugar cookies perfectly from memory. And the smell of a real bakery is divine.

All sorts of local goodness - bakeries, bookstores, hardware stores - are being mown down before the bigbox behemoths. Your cheap shortening, corn syrup and fake flavorings can't compare to the goodness that is Meullers Bakery. (shakes fist) I'ma take my verklemptiness and go home.

We have three independent bakeries within a five minute walk.

I'm here in beautiful Madison, WI, and the bakery world is alive and well. We have a Russian bakery, a lovely kosher doughnut shop, a European bakery, several pie specialists, a Mexican panaderia, a Lebanese doughnut place that also sells awesome gyros, an all-purpose place in the middle of the former Italian enclave, a gluten-free shop, as well as Farmer's Market vendors of fine potato doughnuts and scones and tea breads and giant spelt loaves and and... the list goes on.

Come on over! The weather's fine!

(Well...)

I now miss my local bakery intensely. I am also hungry. The two might be related.

Weirdly, one of the fastest expanding chains in the UK is Greggs, which is a gloriously crap version of a local bakery. They now have more shops than McDonalds.

My area still has a lot of independent bakeries: Portuguese, Italian, German, Vietnamese...I'm sure I'm missing some ethnicity or another but those are the ones I visit the most often and that's not counting the countless indy donut shops and panaderias.

I'm fortunate to live near a good bakery that's been in business since 1936 and in the same location since 1947. Well, I don't know if fortunate is the right word as I drive past it twice daily and it's really hard to resist dropping in for goodies and it also doesn't help that one of the women who works behind the counter is the daughter-in-law to one of my neighbors and always has a friendly smile and free cookies.

If you are ever in Hanford CA, stop by Mrs. T's Sweets, a neighborhood bakery run by my son's girlfriend's mom. She also does custom orders of virtually any pastry or savory dish you want.

Hi, Madamina! I don't know you but I'm in Janesville. We have some nice local bakeries too, although not as many as there used to be, and we mostly shop at Woodman's or the bread outlet nowadays.

There's a really decent bakery in Chicago's Andersonville with some retained Swedish character, and Bennison's in Evanston was still open last time I was there (ironically, a Janesville family originally).

Another Chicagolander here. I had no idea that the robust, decades' old bakeries in our area were a regional exception to the national rule.

Next you guys will be telling me that you don't celebrate Paczki Day!

Noooo, but we do have a Pulaski day parade.