Mrs. Baird First Baked Bread in Kitchen Stove

Article in the Fort Worth Press, published on Sunday, January 24, 1960, page 17 A.

Mrs. Baird First Baked Bread in Kitchen Stove

The family bakery Mrs. Baird started in her home kitchen in 1908 here in Fort Worth has grown into America's largest independent baking organization.

The market area served in 1908 was all within walking distance of that first home kitchen bakery. Today the area served by Mrs. Baird's eight plants covers the major portion of Texas and contains an estimated 6,116,000 people.

The story of the growth of this Fort Worth-founded business is one that could happen only in America. Around the turn of the century, Mrs. Baird was doing all the baking for her family of eight. She often baked more bread than she needed and gave the extra loaves to her neighbors. They liked "Mrs. Baird's Bread" as they called it, and asked her to bake for them too. When Mrs. Baird's husband became too ill to work, she decided to go into the baking business. Son Deward, 16, became first assistant baker to his mother. The three younger boys, Hoyt, Roland, and C. B. became "route men" and delivered the fresh bread on foot, carrying the bread in baskets.

The little business prospered and Mrs. Baird purchased a small wood-burning oven from a Fort Worth hotel. She paid seventy-dollars for the oven - twenty-five dollars in cash and paid out the rest in bread and rolls. The first commercial oven baked 40 loaves at a time.

One neighbor told another. Soon the delivery job became too much for the boys and a horse and wagon were purchased. To meet the first need for expansion, Mrs. Baird put up a little wooden building in the back yard to house the oven.

In 1919, the business had grown so that it entered its first brick building at Sixth and Terrell here in Fort Worth. This building was enlarged and imporved until it soon became one of the largest baking plants in Texas. It is now devoted to cakes.

As Mrs. Baird's sons reached maturity, the company continued to to expand. Today there are bakeries in Fort Worth, Dallas, Houston, Abilene, Lubbock, and Victoria. A cake plant is located in Fort Worth, at 6th and Terrell, and a frozen roll plant is located in Dallas.

Mrs. Ninnie Baird still heads the organization she founded as chairman of the board. She observed her 90th birthday in May of last year.

End of Article


This article is important because a photograph of a light colored wood shed accompanies the article, with the caption, "Mrs. Baird's first bakery." It is the only photograph I've found of the old shed. The exact location of this shed isn't known.