The legacy of Jenny Lee Bakery: A sweet McKees Rocks tradition

Editor’s note: This is the second in an ongoing series highlighting legacy businesses in our West Hills communities. What’s a legacy businesses? It’s a long-standing, community-oriented, independent business, often small, that is vital to a neighborhood’s identity, culture, and economy. Our first story focused on Don Hollowood and Hollowood Music & Sound and now we’re introducing you to Scott Baker’s Jenny Lee Swirl Breads, another McKees Rocks gem.

If you’d like to nominate a legacy business in your neighborhood for consideration for a future installment, please drop us a line at mail@westhillsgazette.com.

Cinnamon swirl bread, blueberry muffins, chocolate chip cookies, cream puffs, chocolate eclairs, cake with buttercream icing. Hungry yet?

If you’ve spent any amount of time in Pittsburgh, you’re surely familiar with the tasty treats made famous by Jenny Lee Bakery in McKees Rocks.

“I just feel very blessed,” said Scott Baker, the fifth-generation baker who’s president of the aptly named 5 Generation Bakers. 

Celebrating 150 years

It all began 150 years ago when Baker’s great-great grandfather Michael Becker came to the United States from Germany, changed his last name to Baker and founded the Michael A. Baker Bakery on Steuben Street in Pittsburgh’s West End.

After his sons joined the business, the name was changed to Michael Baker & Sons. When Michael Baker retired, his seven sons continued to grow the business and their Seven Baker Brothers Bakery became the largest wholesale bakery in Pennsylvania in the early 1900s, with dozens of horse-drawn carriages delivering door to door.

In 1938, Paul Baker, Scott’s grandfather, and Paul’s cousin Bernard McDonald realized the advantages of having a retail space, allowing customers to come to them, and founded Jenny Lee Bakery in Pittsburgh’s Diamond Market, now known as Market Square.

At first, most of their products were still being manufactured by Seven Baker Brothers. After a few months, when the requests for doughnuts came flooding in, they started frying them in Jenny Lee Bakery’s front window and soon started making all their own baked goods in a leased space in Dormont.

After outgrowing that space in 1941, the Bakers bought their first building in McKees Rocks, where the Jenny Lee tradition lives on to this day, despite a devastating Thanksgiving fire in 2006.

According to Scott, the support from Pittsburgh after the fire was incredible. “You could tell that we were a fabric of their lives,” he said. “Jenny Lee closed in 2008, so almost 20 years ago. And, literally, I still get calls—when are you going to start making the cream puffs again?”

Scott admits joining the family business was not originally on his radar. “When I started thinking about a career, I really had no intentions of being in the baking industry, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he said.

He spent his first year studying education before attending the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, Kan., eventually graduating from the University of Pittsburgh and joining his dad in running Jenny Lee.

The 2008 recession took its toll on the bakery, as it was still trying to recover from the fire two years prior. When Jenny Lee closed its doors in August 2008, Scott had no desire to open another bakery.

That’s until he helped his dad liquidate the business.

Sorting through file folders with photos and newspaper clippings and ads from the 1930s and 1940s got him thinking. “And that was my a-ha moment,” he recalled. “You know what? I can do this. My grandfather started over and I’m a fifth generation baker. That was my inspiration.”

In 2010, he started making Jenny Lee Swirl bread again in Jenny Lee’s original McKees Rocks location. “It was a great place for me to get the business started since I was familiar with the facility, but ultimately we knew we needed to expand outwards from that eventually,” he said.

Did you know that over the years other well known local bakeries including Karn’s in Robinson, Bethel in Bethel Park and Mancini’s in McKees Rocks were all run by members of the Baker family?

While offers came from other locations, Baker ultimately made the decision to stay in McKees Rocks.

“McKees Rocks is home,” he said. “When we were looking to expand, I didn’t want to leave McKees Rocks.”

As a founding member of the McKees Rocks Community Development Corp. and a long-time McKees Rocks Rotarian, the choice was simple when the Bottom Dollar Supermarket property became available in 2015.

“It fell into our lap,” he recounted.

Scott’s first swirl bread customers were King’s Family Restaurant and Shop ‘n Save. Now, Jenny Lee Swirl Bread is sold in dozens of Giant Eagle and Market District supermarkets, specialty grocers and restaurants, online, as well as on QVC, where it’s been awarded the customer choice award for best bread three years in a row. Jenny Lee’s raisin bread was also named America’s best raisin bread by the California Raisin Marketing Board.

The Breakfast Nook

The latest chapter in the Jenny Lee story takes place on Brodhead Road in Moon Township at the Jenny Lee Breakfast Nook, serving breakfast and lunch favorites, featuring that iconic swirl bread.

“Having our first location in Moon Township was equally a blessing because I grew up here, went to high school here, my parents still live here, and hundreds of friends are in this community,” Scott said.

The Nook also provided Scott an opportunity to bring back dry mixes of some of the products, like chocolate chip cookies, yellow cake and classic muffins, that customers clamored for. Although he’s not making any promises, Scott said potentially even those famous chocolate eclairs and thumbprints could come back.

And, in case you’re wondering, there’s no one named Jenny Lee in the Baker family. The name comes from the 1930s song “Sweet Jennie Lee.”