About Us
A note to you from Silke
Long before there was a Silke's Old World Breads, there was my kitchen with flour on the counters and our two little boys underfoot. Tim and I met in Germany and married in 1988, and when the Army brought us to Clarksville, Tennessee in 1991, I found myself a long way from the breads I had grown up with. So I set out to learn how to make them myself.
I read library books and tried whatever I could find, one batch at a time, getting a little braver and a lot more curious as I went. My Christmas baking came out of my Omi's kitchen, and some cakes from my Mom, but bread was a discovery all my own.
In 1995, all of that experimenting gave me a sourdough starter that we still feed every single day. It lives at the heart of most of our breads.
Every trip back to Germany became part of my education. Two bakery owners in my hometown, friends of my Mom's, welcomed me into their bakeries and shared what they knew. On a family holiday in Austria, the place we were staying happened to have a bakery in their small village in the Alps, so I slipped out of bed in the middle of the night and walked down the path to work alongside the family of bakers to learn how they made their pretzels. Eventually, baking was taking up more and more room in my life, and Tim and I had begun to wonder out loud what it might mean to open a bakery of our own.
Our trip to Germany in 1998 turned out to be the one that decided it. We spent our days in the bakeries of my hometown, and while my Mom stayed with the boys, Tim and I got away to Paris for a couple of days to taste what the bakers there were creating. All of it fed the conversation we were already having about our own possibilities.
Then came the flight home. I sat down in my chair on the plane with Tim and the boys beside me, and I pulled the in-flight magazine, Attaché, from the seat pocket. On the cover was a loaf of bread and two words: "Bread Rises."
The article told of a renaissance of real bread in America, of people returning to traditional methods and opening bakeries out of pure love for the craft. After everything we had just seen and talked about, here it was, sitting in my hands as one of those monumental turning points.
I looked at Tim with goosebumps all over my arms. I knew, right then, that this was my sign.
"Looks like this is what we're going to be doing," he said.
And that's exactly what we did. We came home and put ourselves fully into it. We expanded and remodeled our garage into a commercial bakery, found the equipment, and built a wood-fired oven with our own hands. In August of 2000, Silke's Old World Breads opened, with just one door separating our family kitchen from the bakery.
We were building a business and a family life in the same spaces, and to us that never seemed unusual. For the first year and a half every loaf came out of that wood-fired oven, until the business grew beyond what it could hold and we brought in the stone-hearth ovens we still bake in today. And yes, the original oven is still standing. It's now part of our dining room at home. If you've ever noticed the big poster behind the bread shelves in our Deli, that's where our first loaves were born.
We started small, just providing bread to several local stores twice a week, and a few people would come and pick up their bread at our house. And it was at that time that our bread was already finding its way to the building you know today as our Café , though we didn't know it yet.
Back then, Anne owned Homespun Corner, the needlework and embroidery shop on College Street, and her customers wanted our bread. So, once a week we delivered loaves to her shop, where a little table waited in the room you now know now as our Stammtisch room. Long before we served a meal or poured a cup of coffee in that building, people were walking through its doors to pick up our bread.
For years, Tim and I had been looking for a place to open a Café and, someday, move the bakery out of our home. When Anne decided to retire, she asked if we would like to bring our Café into her space. It did not take us long to say yes. After all that searching, the answer had been waiting in a place where we already belonged. The day we moved in, Anne gave me a framed embroidery that said ‘Miracles Happen Always’, and it felt exactly how it all was unfolding.
Our Café opened in 2005. We kept baking at home for several more years, until the space next door became available unexpectedly, and we turned the rest of the building into our Bakery and Deli on College Street. When our Deli opened in 2012, the little bakery we had started at home had grown into something much fuller than we ever imagined.
What I had wanted to share through bread was becoming a whole experience. The German Bäckerei with its breads and rolls, the Konditorei with its cakes and tortes, the simple pleasure of sitting down in a European café with good food and good company. All of it had inspired me, and here in Clarksville we could bring it together under one roof and let people discover it in their own way.
The food reflects the two of us, too. I have been vegetarian since 1994 and eat mostly vegan, while Tim enjoys his meat. Between us we found the balance you see on our menu: German specialties alongside vegetarian and vegan dishes I wanted people to love just as much, and gluten-free choices so there is room at the table for everyone.
You might come for a Schnitzel sandwich on one of our rolls, share a pizza on our own crust, or pair a vegan pastry with your coffee. In our Deli you can pick up your bread and carry home German meats and cheeses, preserves, or local honey and maple syrup. For some people these foods bring back Germany, or travels somewhere in Europe. For others they're a first taste of something that becomes a favorite.
Through everything that has changed, the way we make our food has not. We are still deeply passionate about this creation. We still make our breads with the same recipes from scratch and shape them by hand. We still give fermentation the time it needs. We still choose every ingredient for what it brings to the food, carrying on the work I began at my own kitchen table — only now with many more hands beside us.
And we could never have built this alone. Tim's best friend Stan and his family carried us through the early years, and Stan baked alongside us for many of them. Susanne, who lived only a short distance from us, was an important part of those beginnings too. Jack, a retired baker who was too bored at home, found his way to us and stayed through the move to College Street. He worked with us until the end of his life; his photograph now hangs in our bakery.
Our Christine and Steffi, the Café managers, have shared so many years of this journey and helped make Silke's the place you know today. Shoutout also to our bakery manager Essie, and to our Mirta, along with all the wonderful people who bake, cook, serve and care for our guests every day. They pour so much of themselves into this place. We are deeply grateful for every one of them.
And then there is you.
Some of you have been buying our bread since the beginning. Others found us through a friend, came in for lunch, or discovered a pastry that kept bringing you back. Over the years we have come to know each other, and so many of you feel like family now. Our own boys grew up with the bakery, and we have had the joy of watching your children grow up here too. Little ones who once played in our Café's play area walk through our doors as adults, and the memories they made here with their families have become part of the life of this place.
When I think back to that flight home, I remember knowing we were going to open a bakery. What I could not have known was how many people would become part of it, or how much of our lives we would end up sharing here.
Thank you for being part of our story. May you continue to make beautiful memories at Silke's with your friends and family.
With love,
Silke & Tim and our wonderful team
