When you open a box of pecan pie from Three Brothers Bakery, you can’t help but smile from the buttery, sugary aroma. The breads and cookies also are unbeatable. These are the products of hard work, care, and miracles.
Bobby Jucker’s family has been in the bakery business for over 200 years. What is now Three Brothers Bakery in Houston, Texas started off as a bread bakery in the small town of Chrzanow, Poland. They made breads such as corn rye and were considered the bread bakers of that area; the whole community went there.
The Jucker family was poor, but they were never hungry. Bobby’s father, Sigmund Jucker - along with Sigmund’s twin brother Sol - had to drop out of school at 10 years old due to a strike in Poland. That is when they really started learning the ins and outs of the bakery. When they were 16 the Germans came. Sigmund’s parents hid him, Sol, and their other brother and sister under the floor for months.
Sigmund couldn’t handle it anymore and went to a town in Russia, where he got black lung and was brought back to health. He worked in a bakery in the town after that. “His shoes were flour sacks and he was sleeping on top of the oven”, explained Bobby. His mother became worried and sent people to find him. The first two tries were unsuccessful, but on the third try they found Sigmund sleeping on top of the oven.
It was very early in the morning when they left and journeyed back to Poland. On that very same day in that particular town in Russia, the Germans came in when the sun was coming up, rounded up all the Jews, and shot them into a grave.
“My dad has in a sense always felt that the bakery has been a kind of luck charm for my family,” Bobby said.
After some time living under the floors again, Sigmund turned himself in to the Germans. That was the end of the bakery for a number of years. He was sent to a concentration camp, where he worked breaking down homes so that the materials could be reused to build a larger home for a German family. Sigmund would tell Bobby: “They tried to kill you. They worked you very very hard. And their ultimate goal was to see you die.”
They served prisoners spinach with sand in it, so that it would shut down their kidneys and kill them. Sigmund was tearing apart a house one day and found a small bag of cocoa. He and a friend hid it and took a spoonful daily instead of the spinach.
“There was continual death all around him", Bobby said. "The cocoa kept him alive.”
Sigmund and his three siblings all survived the war. In large part this was thanks to their sister, who worked in the office of a camp and was able to bring the brothers there. They searched for their parents for four years after the war to find that they were sent to Auschwitz where they perished.
In 1949, the three Jucker brothers came to the United States. Their sister, who was living in Houston, Texas, told them “You need to come to Houston. The streets are lined with gold.” They found work in a bakery, where they worked so hard they started losing a lot of weight. They realized they could do it on their own. That’s when the Jucker brothers decided to open their own bakery.
Sigmund, Sol and Max bought a space they could afford, but it happened to have only one parking spot. “They didn’t know you have to have parking in Houston, Texas!” Bobby said. Because of this they struggled to make enough money for those first five years. After a few moves, in 1960 they again moved to where they are today.
Bobby officially started working in the bakery 38 years ago, but it has always been a major part of his life. At a very young age, Bobby learned to make bagels and kaiser rolls. He recalls Sigmund and his brothers making racks of kaiser rolls by hand. “I’ve always grown up in the bakery”, he said. “That was my babysitting place. That’s really how I learned.”
Three Brothers Bakery makes its history known; current bakery boxes include “A Little History about Three Brothers Bakery”, and a note from the bakery to its customers reads: “Because of you, we are able to put focus on those who are hungry and homeless with our day old goods, for the three brothers knew what it was to be hungry during their imprisonment in the Nazi concentration camps.” The bakery lets its customers know that there are deeper layers to the delicious products.
Many of the recipes are the same as they were in Poland; the recipes stayed in the brothers’ minds throughout the war. Bobby's favorite product is the rye bread. He explained that he would watch his dad mix the rye bread in a trough growing up, as they did not have a mixer. “Once you start adding flour to rye bread dough, it’s like glue. It just starts getting stiffer and stiffer. Seeing that growing up, it’s one of my favorites that we do in the bakery today”, Bobby said.
For Sigmund, the favorite was corn rye, which is what he grew up on and was common in Poland. It differs from rye due to its heavier texture. “It’s like a soupy dough”, Bobby said. “You literally have to take a chunk of it out of the bowl and spin it into a round shape and drop it onto a pan. It’s very unique - there aren’t many bakeries that make it like that anymore.”
There have been numerous additions to the menu as well: gingerbread men, the pecan pie that has won a number of awards, and a famous Pumpecapple Piecake, among myriad other products. Bobby explains that in Poland, you were very wealthy if you had sugar so they did not make a lot with sugar. They did make a poppy seed strudel, which continues to be baked today. When they came to the United States, they realized they had access to sugar and could make other things that used to be too expensive. That is how the bakery evolved into making so many other American cakes and pastries.
Beyond the food and history attached to the bakery, Bobby is grateful for the “incredibly loyal customers and employees.” He said, “Food is something that gives people a sense of community. Our customers have supported us for 72 years.” One customer was even a customer in Poland; she was also a survivor from Chrzanow, Poland, and would tell Bobby stories of going to the bakery to get bread for her family. She said that it was the only place they got bread from.
“My dad thought he was the wealthiest man even though he did not have much”, Bobby said. “He felt like he was a millionaire. It wasn’t about money. For my dad, it was all about food. That lived with him through his entire life.”
