The Midway Bakery: History in Every Bite
story by Donna Hecker & photography by Talitha Schroeder
At Chef Ouita Michel’s Midway Bakery, we bake history into every batch of buttermilk biscuits, sandwich bread, and cinnamon rolls that come out of the oven.
Nestled in the basement of the former Midway School, our Midway Bakery occupies the space once used for the school cafeteria, a 1940s addition with walls of cream and aqua subway tile, and windows looking out on a playground still in use.
The current building replaced one that was destroyed by a devastating fire in 1923. Here’s how it was reported at the time in The Bluegrass Clipper –
“The old schoolhouse was discovered to be on fire on Sunday night, December 16, 1923, just as the people were eating their suppers. Midway was without telephone communication then and the town had but one pump engine and by the time someone got to the residence of Mrs. J. Breckenridge Viley to telephone Versailles for assistance, there was no hope of saving the building. The Versailles fire department arrived as soon as they could, but only to see the crumbling walls fall to the ground.”
The community rallied and the school was rebuilt in 1924 and welcomed students back the following year. Midway was inordinately proud of its new school, described as a “palace compared to the old building”, and in particular its walls of red brick, a color repeated in our logo today.
When new subscribers sign up for our newsletter, we send them a recipe for our Betty Ann scones. These white chocolate and fruit-studded treats are the namesake of a beloved Midway resident, the late Betty Ann Voigt. For several years, we’ve leased office space in the Porter House, where Betty Ann grew up. Betty Ann’s stepmother Nell Voigt was hired to teach at the Midway School in 1924 while the new building was still under construction. Later in life, Nell was often asked to share her reminiscences and did so generously.
The school continued to anchor the civic and social life of the small community and when its men’s basketball team won the Kentucky high school championship in 1937, a record crowd filled the University of Kentucky’s Alumni Gym to bursting. That same year, Louisville and Northern Kentucky experienced historic flooding and according to Nell, the building accommodated “a large number of refugees from the flood in Louisville.”
My own uncle Stan Hecker, Jr. was superintendent of Midway Independent Schools from 1951-53 before joining the Kentucky Department of Education. One of his good friends from his time in Midway was Philip Weisenberger, father of Mac Weisenberger and grandfather of Philip Weisenberger, the current owners and caretakers of Weisenberger Mill.
Weisenberger Mill is a sixth-generation water-powered gristmill on the banks of Elkhorn Creek, just down the road from Midway. At the Midway Bakery, we use Weisenberger stone ground flour in all our baked goods and our restaurants use its cornmeal and corn grits, ground from corn sourced from Nat Henton’s family farm. Nat cooked at Holly Hill Inn and also at Woodford Reserve Distillery while Chef Ouita was chef-in-residence there.
When the Midway School was integrated in 1955, Nell Voigt’s description of a senior class trip to Washington, D.C. reads like field notes on the civil rights movement. “Only one black male and one black female were seniors. Because the Capitol (sic) of our nation would not serve black people in restaurants, we crossed the bridge of Alexandria, Va., and had meals in the same chain of restaurants as in Washington, where we could all eat together.”
Consolidation came along in the 60s and the Midway School was subsumed into the Woodford County system. Holly Hill Inn general manager Jackie Anthony was a member of the last student body at the Midway School when it was replaced by Northside Elementary in 1991. Eleven-year-old Jackie was a featured speaker at Northside’s dedication.
“I can’t remember what I said that day but I remember what I wore – a brown shorts set with a pattern of white leaves all over. My mom was all about my clothes matching! But our Midway Elementary Annuals were the best; Mr. James, the PE teacher for many years, made them so much fun! Tug of war, relay races – my parents still have my ribbons.”
After several years of neglect and decay, Midway once again rallied around its school and by the end of the 90s, the building had been transformed into the Midway School Apartments through an award-winning renovation project undertaken by Holly Wiedemann and AU Associates.
Chris and Ouita Michel opened Holly Hill Inn a couple of years later, followed by Wallace Station Bakery and Deli in 2003. When Wallace Station’s sandwich business quickly overran its bakery business, the hunt was on for an alternative and the Midway Bakery opened in 2012. Having long coveted the building’s trademark red “M”, Chef Ouita made it part of the bakery logo, superimposed on an aqua-colored rolling pin, an echo of the cafeteria’s tiled walls.
On a recent gray day, the Midway Bakery was a bright and bustling hive of activity as bakers rolled out biscuits, crimped pie crusts and stamped cross hatches onto peanut butter cookies. Longtime employee Justin Traugott supervised the whirlwind while his fellow veteran (and real-life veteran) Michael Barcus divided dough into sandwich loaves destined for other Holly Hill restaurants.
The Midway Bakery is open to the public again and regulars are streaming back for their morning cinnamon rolls and quiche for weekend brunch. As the weather warms, assistant manager Kayla McGaughey hopes that folks will come and sit outside on the brightly colored Adirondack chairs. Perhaps they’ll watch kids at play on the same slide that Jackie and her classmates once flew down. It’s living proof of how schools, even former ones, never lose the power to connect their community.
Related Content
Midway Bakery Tips for the Tenderest, Tastiest Buttermilk Biscuits
Here are a few insider tips from the folks who’ve been making our buttermilk biscuits for nearly 15 years. You can find the recipe, which originated at Holly Hill Inn, in the first few pages of Chef Ouita’s cookbook, Just a Few Miles South.
© 2023, Holly Hill Inn/Ilex Summit, LLC and its affiliates, All Rights Reserved
