Building the Valley: Freeport bakery offers taste of the past

School lunches get a bad rap, but something about the buns served on spaghetti days at Freeport Area School District cafeterias enchanted Sarah Vivian.

“The lunch ladies would make these big, yeasty rolls, and you could smell it throughout the whole school,” Vivian fondly recalled.

Apparently, the buns have stuck with plenty of other alums who have stopped by her bakery, Vivian’s Bakehouse, in Freeport since it opened in August for a taste of nostalgia. She recreated the magic — with fewer ingredients — by modifying a recipe posted online a while back.

It’s one of many nods to the past at Vivian’s Bakehouse as it pitches in for the future of Freeport, being the borough’s lone retail bakery.

There are tiny touches, such as repurposed racks from the Fifth Street storefront’s most recent occupant, a video rental business that closed decades ago, as well as less subtle decor, such as a painting of a long-defunct grocery store in town.

The racks start the day full of sourdough loaves and often are empty by the afternoon. Vivian, who was sporting a shirt recently with the ingredients, keeps it simple: flour, water and salt.

“Just so much of this small, little town I wanted to bring into the building,” said Vivian, who lives in South Buffalo but is deeply connected to the entire Freeport area as a boomerang resident.

She has deep ties to baking, too.

About 15 years ago, at the height of the cake pop craze, Vivian shut down her home bakery that made and shipped these iced, spherical confections to spend more time with her budding family.

Her son, Wyatt, now 15, was born around that time, and he’d later get two siblings: Gabriel, 12, and Rose, 10.

“And then, when my kids got a bit older, I realized I had some time,” she said.

At first, she tried to keep it a strictly family affair, calling upon her kids and other loved ones. That didn’t last long.

Vivian remembered how, on the bakery’s first day in business, her father looked up from washing dishes and, to his dismay and delight, saw a packed house.

“Sarah, I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he told Vivian.

Vivian has since hired nine workers, including family friend Therese Ganster, 68, also of South Buffalo. She’s a big fan of, well, just about everything the bakery has to offer.

“It just kind of melts in your mouth,” Ganster said about the cinnamon knots, closing her eyes as though taking an imaginary bite.

By Ganster’s assessment, the buns are “to die for.” And the bread pudding muffins, she said, will stir up memories of grandparents.

Dennis and Chris Buday of Allegheny Township didn’t have to take Ganster’s word for it.

On Oct. 3, they spent their afternoon nibbling on a muffin and Italian panini outside the bakery, fueling up for their bike ride back home on the Tredway Trail. Freeport is one of many communities in the Alle-Kiski Valley where businesses say they’ve seen an uptick in foot and bike traffic as the region’s trail network expands.

“You don’t go in there to watch your waistline,” Chris Buday joked. “Then, you get on your bicycle and work it off.”

Paul Skanderson stopped by later that day and was taken by the school-baked buns.

“I haven’t had one since 2017,” the Harrison resident said.

On his way out the door, he leaned over a bag with a few buns and took a whiff.

“It does smell like it used to,” he said.

Vivian’s Bakehouse, located at 225 Fifth St., is open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sundays.