A Sweet Tradition at Amish Baking Company

For Sadie Peachey, the kitchen has always been a place for bonding. Growing up Amish and working on her family’s farm in Statesville, N.C., she and her five siblings, cousins, aunts and grandmas all shared kitchen duties after a long day’s work. Together, they would cook the family’s three hearty meals, making memories around the warm aroma of the kitchen. There was a seemingly endless parade of fresh-made bread, pies and cakes. But on the rare occasion when snow hit the hills of Statesville, they shared an extra sweet tradition: homemade doughnuts.

Now, with her food truck, Amish Baking Co., Peachey and her older brother, Nate, who are no longer practicing Amish, are sharing that tradition with Sarasota. Inspired by her lifelong love of baking, Peachey and her brother purchased the truck in early November to mobilize their already popular Amish doughnut business. They recently established a residency at the Phillippi Farmhouse Market every Wednesday and can now go to large annual community events, such as the downtown Sarasota Christmas parade.

The business first began in 2007, as an extension of Peachey’s mother’s kitchen. She would bake and sell pies, bread and cakes, but eventually the Peachey family narrowed down its menu to one gooey dish.

“We chose doughnuts because growing up, we didn’t make them very often,” says Peachey. “For my family and all my friends’ families, baking doughnuts was always a celebration and something special. If we were going to make something for the people, we wanted it to be the best treat that we could possibly make.”

However, Peachey and her doughnuts weren’t always so mobile. For the first eight years of operation, she and her family would cart their ingredients and cooking appliances to outdoor events, where they would set up shop under a tent.

Peachey and the Amish Baking Co. started out small at local farmers markets and then began slowly expanding outward throughout Florida, traveling to the Florida State Fair in Tampa, the Okeechobee County Fair, the Florida Strawberry Festival in Plant City, the Sun ‘n Fun Airshow in Lakeland, and eventually traveling across the country to share their doughnuts at the Blue Plum Festival in Johnson City, Tenn., the Albuquerque International Balloon Festival and even drafting a 50-member team to sell doughnuts to the munchies-filled masses at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn.

Attending these events almost every year, the Amish Baking Co. began getting a reputation. So much so that one family traveled eight hours just for her family’s doughnuts.

“My favorite part of this job is to the see the people out front enjoying our doughnuts,” says Peachey. “That’s the absolute best. It’s all the pay I need. It’s rewarding to watch it come full circle and see people standing out and enjoying the same doughnut we ate as kids.”