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Fresh Baked
Goodness
By Katherine E. Hill
The smell of fresh baked pastries
and breads wafting through a favorite bakery is one of life’s
simple pleasures. The scent tells you that bakers were kneading
dough and baking while you still slumbered in your bed. It’s
intoxicating and soothing to smell that fresh baked goodness
whether you’re starting your day, stopping in for lunch or
taking a mid-afternoon break.
The smell of a bakery reminds
people of home, of fresh baked pastries and of the love that’s
put into each recipe. The same is true for two long-time locals’
favorites – Tahoe House and the Treat Box. The West Shore’s
Tahoe House has been delighting its customers with its
European-inspired pastries and its delectable food since 1977.
The Treat Box has been enticing its customers with tasty
delights since it opened in 1975 in Truckee.
Tahoe House
 The
Tahoe House has been delighting its loyal customers since it
opened as a restaurant in the late-70s. Peter and Helen Vogt,
natives of Switzerland, opened Tahoe House as a dinner
restaurant. Peter, a trained chef, did the cooking while Helen
ran the front of the house. From early on their daughters,
Barbara and Caroline, pitched in. As the girls grew, so did
their roles at Tahoe House – Barbara began working alongside her
father, while Caroline helped her mother in the front.
Through the years, Tahoe House has
morphed from offering dinner, running a bakery and selling Tahoe
House products at farmers’ markets to becoming a favorite
bakery, gourmet grocery and deli.
“It’s been a lot of small changes
over 30 years,” says Barbara. “It’s been an evolution.”
In the early 80s, Peter was
frustrated with the lack of quality breads for the restaurant
and began to bake bread. Around the same time, Peter and Helen
started selling herbs and vegetables that they grew in Colfax at
farmer’s markets, but before long customers were asking for the
bread.
A bakery was added to the front of
the restaurant in the mid-1990s after the girls returned from
college, Barbara from culinary school and Caroline from studying
restaurant management.
The restaurant the Hogts started
had burgeoned into a nearly 24-hour-a-day operation with dinner,
the bakery upfront, attending 15 farmers’ markets a week and
harvest festivals throughout the year to sell their bottled
sauces, and making cakes during the busy summer wedding season.
“We looked at it and we decided we
needed to concentrate on one thing,” says Caroline.
“There was no other bakery in
Tahoe City,” adds Barbara in the family’s decision to focus on
the bakery.
“For us it’s been a great move,”
Caroline says. “You have to give people what they want, but also
offer variety.”
Barbara credits her father with
the restaurant’s evolution, saying he’s always been responsive
to what the customer wants.
“The willingness to change,
really, has been dad keeping up with things,” she says.
“Dad says you have to see what
people want and give it to them,” Caroline adds.
In the summer of 2007, J.B. Joynt
joined the Tahoe House family becoming the baker and a partner
in the family business. Joynt was a former long-time employee
and baker that the Hogts lured back to join the family business
after he had been working in Texas for several years (his wife
Michelle works in the front).
“He’s really part of the family. …
Our parents think of him as an adopted son,” Caroline says,
adding that they all grew up together.
The sisters attribute many of the
new pastries being offered at the Tahoe House to Joynt, such as
the whole grain English muffins, the breakfast rolls and the
muffins.
“We’ve just been kind of trying
new things,” Caroline adds.
 The
European influence is strong in the pastries and gourmet grocery
items that Tahoe House makes and carries, with a few Swiss
favorites for the die-hard natives, including the Neussgipfel, a
croissant with almonds and hazelnut that Barbara calls a “Swiss
tradition.”
“We use quality ingredients
throughout, including importing some items from Switzerland,”
Barbara says.
“Our stuff is a little more
European influenced. … Some things we have are not as sweet” as
Americans are used to, Caroline adds.
The delectable coffee is made in
the Swiss manner, as well.
“People just love our coffee,”
Caroline says. “It’s brewed that way in Switzerland. Each cup is
brewed fresh with crème on top.”
The coffee also was an evolution.
Locals that enjoyed the coffee served with dinner would stop by
in the morning and request a cup of coffee while heading to the
lifts.
“They kind of forced us into the
coffee business,” Barbara says. “That built our bakery, too.”
Today, the bakery is a staple of
the Tahoe House’s operations. Along with fresh baked breads,
bagels and pastries, they also offer desserts, cookies and lunch
daily from fresh soups and sandwiches to a variety of deli
salads.
Lunch is as popular as breakfast
with homemade soups made daily, salads and sandwiches on good
bread, Barbara says. Among the favorites are the Chinese chicken
salad and the Black Forest ham and gruyere sandwich.
 The
gourmet grocery also is an essential part of today’s business
with scores of Tahoe House products offered for sale – sauces,
dressings, marinades, pastas, salsas, pasta sauces, jams, dip
mixes, seasonings and rubs. The Tahoe House products also are
popular for souvenirs and gifts. There’s also a large selection
of wine and gourmet food items such as meats, cheeses and
fondue.
Tahoe House also offers
casseroles, ready-to-bake pizzas, crab cakes, grilled chicken,
meatloaf, potato pancakes, smoked trout, chicken potpies,
polenta and soups vacuum-sealed on site for customers to grab a
quick dinner to take with them.
Barbara also prepares two kinds of
fresh fish every Friday that customers can pick up to cook at
home.
Summertime also means the busy
wedding season with Barbara baking five to six cakes each
weekend. Bride’s need to book at least six to nine months in
advance to get a Tahoe House wedding cake.
“A lot of people that order
wedding cakes become customers. We get a lot of compliments on
how good the wedding cake is,” Caroline says.
Customer service also is a key to
the restaurant’s success. Locals and regular visitors are
greeted by their first name with the staff ready to prepare
their favorite drink. And, one of the sisters is always on site.
After grabbing a coffee and a
pastry, don’t rush off. Take a seat on one of the couches or
cozy up the fireplace and relax.
The Tahoe House is a welcome spot
to relax and is a popular place for groups to meet, to hold
business meetings or to get a little work down outside the
office with the free wireless Internet.
“It’s like it’s your own living
room,” Barbara says. “You can hang out here.”
Treat Box
 Service
in the U.S. Navy led Lee Dufresne to a career as a baker that
has thrived in Truckee since 1975.
Dufresne started baking aboard an
aircraft carrier in 1967.
“I didn’t think I was going to do
it when I got out,” Dufresne says.
While his tour later ended, the
baking did not.
“People started knocking on my
door when they found out I was baker,” he says with a chuckle.
Originally from Vermont, Dufresne
later moved to Southern California where he said baking jobs
were easy to find. But, in 1977 he and his wife, Phyllis,
decided to move to Truckee to raise their children. He started
working at the Treat Box and within a few months he bought the
business.
While the move to a higher
altitude presented baking challenges, Dufresne said he was
prepared to cope after baking aboard an aircraft carrier rolling
along the high seas.
“It’s been a good place to raise
our kids,” he says of the move he and his wife made more than 30
years ago.
Now, both of their sons are
bakers, Jeremy at Tamarack Junction and Joe works alongside his
father at The Treat Box. Daughter Aimee also has a hand in the
business, helping with bookkeeping.
Today, the Treat Box is a favorite
local spot for breakfast and lunch with fresh baked breads,
pastries and pies, cakes, espresso and sandwiches. They also
keep busy with wedding cakes during the summer.
“All of the doughnuts are pretty
popular,” Dufresne says as he peers through the tightly packed
cases full of fresh baked goodies.
Treat Box offers a range of baked
goods including Danish pastries, French pastries, bagels,
cannolis, lemon bars, muffins, turnovers, cookies and cakes.
Breads include sandwich rolls, sourdough, Squaw Bread, French
bread and rolls, and 12-grain bread. They also offer a variety
of hearty breakfast sandwiches along with burgers and sandwiches
for lunch.
Dufresne has run the Treat Box out
of the same spot in Truckee since it opened. While the business
has grown, its space has not. Without room for baking equipment,
most of the bakery items are made by hand.
 “We
really didn’t have a lot of room for equipment … so we had to do
it the old-fashioned way by hand,” he says.
Pies are a favorite among the
Treat Box’s offerings.
“We take a lot of orders. We have
a lot of pies to begin with,” he says.
A number of tasty pies can be
found baked daily including apple, Dutch apple, peach,
strawberry-rhubarb and kohl berry. They also bake pies to order,
including cream pies.
“We offer pretty much a variety of
things. It keeps us from getting bored,” Dufresne says.
Diversifying the business is
important, says Dufresne, who sells a lot of their cookies to
local stores and restaurants.
While Dufresne is still going
strong, he says son Joe will take over the family business when
he’s ready.
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