Photo credit: Canfora Bakery
“When customers tell me they hadn’t noticed any changes, I take it as a compliment,” says Eric Krieg. With his wife, Karen, he purchased Canfora Bakery (1100 E. Oklahoma Ave.) in August 2017 from Calogero and Rosalba Canfora, who retired that year. The Kriegs are carrying on their baking traditions with all the bread, rolls, cookies, doughnuts, cakes and deli offerings that made Canfora Bakery popular in the Bay View community.
The Kriegs operate the business as Krieg’s Lakeside Bakery dba Canfora. Lakeside is a nod to the bakery that occupied the space before the Canforas moved their bakery there in 1997. “They built a wonderful reputation, and I can’t compliment them enough. If you’ve got something that works, don’t change it,” Eric affirms. The Canforas allowed the Kriegs to use the Canfora name for five years while the Kriegs build their own reputation and phase in their name.
Neither Eric nor Karen have professional baking backgrounds, but Karen loves to bake, especially at Christmas. They both come from families that owned small businesses; Eric’s family had owned Krieg’s Bluemound Television, and Karen’s parents were motel owners. “We wanted to make sure we had something to leave to our children,” says Karen. “We wanted to have a business where we could work with the kids and keep the family close.”
All five Krieg children are involved, handling management and supervisory duties, baking bread with the night crew, cake decorating and making boxes. Karen notes they wouldn’t have made it through the recent Easter holiday without their help. The baking staff from Canfora also stayed on.
Karen said one of the few new items they’ve added was Pfeffernüsse at Christmas, due to customer requests. They’ve added more wholesale customers, and they keep an eye on trends. They’ve added the popular “naked cakes,” which are layers of cake with filling, unfrosted and presented with clear cake collars around them.
The bakery offers custom order cakes for all occasions, as well as holiday and theme cakes in the store. There’s also a cooler with grab-and-go decorated cakes. Éclairs are one of their top selling items, Eric said, as are their classic frosted brownies. They continue to sell lots of doughnuts, which are a little larger than doughnuts at some other bakeries. The generously sized Persian doughnuts have just the right amounts of cinnamon, frosting and peanuts. There are classic sugar cookies, or Italian cookies like tri-colored spumoni or tutu, a round, lightly glazed chocolate cookie with walnut chunks and chocolate chips.
Karen said they get many compliments on their made-to-order sandwiches, which are fairly inexpensive ($5.99 and $6.99) and piled with ingredients. They have meats like mortadella, an Italian luncheon meat made of finely ground, heat-cured pork. Saturday deli specials include homemade pizza squares, hot beef and gravy or Badger baked ham, which include six free rolls with a one-pound purchase. Popular deli salads, to Karen’s surprise, include octopus salad, which she says has a pickled fish flavor. There’s also potato and pasta salads, broccoli-cauliflower, coleslaw or olive salads.
Krieg’s Lakeside Bakery dba Canfora is small enough to accommodate custom and corporate orders, such as nearby Wrought Washer Manufacturing’s special washer-shaped cookie that they distribute at trade shows. Since entering the bakery business, the Kriegs say the experience has been phenomenal, and the Bay View neighborhood has been wonderful and supportive.
