Annelore Gstattenbauer doesn’t say exactly what time she unlocks the door at Annelore’s German Bakery, but she does offer this: “I start very early.”
Annelore preps the night before, and the ovens are programmed to be hot by the time she walks in. “I have all my space, I have all my options, and I can just go,” she says. “There’s no phone ringing. I’m not needed. I can just enjoy and produce.”
By mid-morning, the quiet has given way to full production. Breads are out of the oven, ingredients are being weighed, buttercream is being piped onto a German chocolate cake, and every bit of it happens in plain view of the checkout counter.
Annelore and her husband, Norbert, have been baking for the Triangle since 2008, and to the best of Norbert’s knowledge, theirs is the only authentic German bakery in Wake County. Some regulars drive an hour and a half from Fayetteville just to stock up.
The building itself is part of the reason. Norbert conceived it, and he talks about it the way some people talk about a recipe. “The building makes a promise,” he explains. “And then when you come in, you find the promise fulfilled.”
Norbert and Annelore Gstattenbauer have been baking for the Triangle since 2008. Their downtown Cary bakery opened in 2017.
That promise starts with family. Annelore’s earliest memory is greasing a cake pan, and as a girl she had a tiny electric oven with two baking trays that she used to make her own Christmas cookies. “Every year I burnt myself on the first one,” she recalls, “but that was just part of it.”
Her family’s small countryside brewery dates to 1665 and is still in operation today, run now by her niece. Annelore grew up in her family’s restaurant near Stuttgart, in the Swabian region; Norbert is from Munich. The two met there, thanks to Annelore’s brother, who attended the same university as Norbert.
They arrived in North Carolina in 2008, just ahead of the financial collapse. “We got out by the skin of our teeth,” Norbert says. Their doctors, friends, and business partners all pointed them south. “Everybody said North Carolina is the place to go,” he says. “I would not consider any other area in The States than here.”
For years, the couple sold as home bakers at the State Farmers Market and the Western Wake and Cary Downtown farmers markets, plus festivals and events across the region. When it came time for a permanent home, they steered clear of shopping centers because, as Annelore says, “you never know what happens and how long you can stay.”
Norbert spotted a building for sale on W. Chatham Street, and when renovating it proved impractical, the Town allowed them to tear it down and build new. The 3,600-square-foot konditorei, or pastry shop, opened in 2017. The business they earned at farmers markets followed. “We have customers that we have known since the first day we set up at the market,” Annelore shares.
Manager Cortney Morley tosses a tray of macaron batter to bring trapped air bubbles to the surface before baking.
With arched windows and a stone facade, Annelore’s German Bakery was designed to look as though it had always been there. “You could virtually take this building and put it into any place in Europe and it would integrate,” Norbert says. “It would not stick out.”
Inside, the business stands on what Norbert calls three pillars — “because a stool on three legs never wobbles.” The first is quality: no preservatives, butter rather than margarine, and buttercream made from scratch in house. The second is authenticity. The German cheesecake is made with quark, not cream cheese, and the bienenstich — bee sting cake — is the real thing. “Whether you buy this in Munich or you buy it in downtown Cary, and you were to put it side by side, you will not taste the difference,” he says.
The third is exceptionality. The Heidelberg rye, the multigrain, the pumpkin seed bread (kürbiskernbrot), the schnecken, and the brötchen — Germany’s crusty rolls — are all made with ingredients imported from Germany.
That commitment comes at a cost. Since the pandemic, Norbert says, shipping a 50-pound bag of the flour he needs for brötchen costs about as much as the flour itself. Tariffs have nudged prices up, and chocolate always seems to be rising, but shortcuts are not an option. “Without that specific type of flour, I cannot make brötchen,” Norbert says. “I cannot call it brötchen.”
The division of labor is clear. Norbert bakes the breads and handles the paperwork. Annelore runs everything else. “Annelore is running the entire operation production-wise. She is the creative head,” Norbert says, gesturing around the sunny, spotless space and toward the well-stocked displays. “This is all Annelore. This is not me.”
Then there are the customers, many of whom, Norbert says, have become friends. “We know the children when they were small. Now they are grown up,” he says. “We have an atmosphere like people were used to 50 years ago, 60 years ago, when you went to the grocery store and they knew you.”
Staff know which regulars are celiac and which have nut allergies. Annelore has watched families weather crises, with the bakery offering what she calls “a little moral support” along the way. She has also celebrated weddings and new babies with them. “You’re part of their lives,” she says. “And vice versa.”
Chocolate shavings are sprinkled onto each macaron shell before baking.
The clientele is wider than you might expect. Military families from the Fayetteville area who served tours in Germany come looking for the real thing. “You cannot fool these people,” Norbert says. “They will know immediately.” Customers from Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine come for the European style of baking. Families from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh fill the shop on weekends, drawn in part by a pistachio pastry and cakes’ gold-leaf flourishes popular in South Asian baking. And with deep German roots in Brazil and Argentina, customers from those countries are among the bakery’s fans, too.
For many, the pull is personal. North Carolina has a sizable population of German heritage, Norbert notes, and he often sees customers searching for flavors from a grandmother’s table they can no longer find or replicate. Annelore hears it all the time. “They come in and say, ‘This is like Oma’s house,’” she shares.
At no other time of year is that truer than during the holidays. The phone calls asking about stollen begin long before the first loaves appear in mid-November. Annelore’s offers three varieties: a Dresden marzipan stollen with a ribbon of marzipan through the middle, a traditional Weihnachtsstollen, and its best seller, a Bavarian butter stollen made from Norbert’s grandmother’s recipe. “We are still using her handwritten recipe,” he says. For those who don’t want a whole loaf, the team bakes the dough into small bites sold by the bag — Norbert’s personal favorite.
Then there’s the lebkuchen: an edible wafer base topped with ground almonds, candied fruit, and Christmas spices (cardamom included because, as Annelore explains, Germans love cardamom), finished with a lemon glaze or a dip in chocolate. Norbert is quick to point out that imported versions, even those that are authentically German, are made in a factory and then spend weeks on the ocean, followed by weeks sitting on a shelf. “They carry the same name,” he says, “but it’s ultimately a totally different product.”
In mid-November, three varieties of stollen join the menu: Dresden marzipan, traditional Weihnachtsstollen, and a Bavarian butter stollen baked from Norbert’s grandmother’s handwritten recipe.
Boxes of Christmas cookies in several sizes sell so quickly that the table is cleared out nearly every day, but the showstopper is the prinzregententorte, a seven-layer cake with every layer baked individually and finished with 24-karat edible gold leaf. In place of a traditional Yule log, Annelore makes a flourless chocolate mousse roulade that she describes as not including decorative mushrooms, just very good chocolate.
Annelore’s own favorites change with the seasons: plum kuchen in summer, raspberry cheesecake, the bee sting cake, and anything cherry. “If I go to turnovers, it’s always cherry,” she says. “If I go to strudel, it’s cherry.”
Back in the kitchen, the promise holds up under inspection — literally. According to the couple, the bakery has earned a perfect 100 on every Wake County health inspection since 2022, including one a week before Christmas. The ice machine is taken apart monthly; the walk-in coolers are cleaned weekly. “It costs money,” Annelore says, “but it’s worth it.”
The team ranges from high schoolers and college students to full-timers, with ages spanning 17 to, as Norbert puts it, “our age.” Wake Tech students have completed internships at Annelore’s, too. Teens learn to count cash, work with their hands, and talk to people from all walks of life. One mother, Annelore says, tells them every time she visits, “Thank you for helping my child grow up.” Most employees leave only for graduation, a new career, or a move out of state. With no middle management and the owners onsite seven days a week, it’s run, Norbert says, “like a family.”
For Annelore and Norbert, every stollen made from a handwritten recipe and every bag of flour shipped at twice the cost comes back to the same idea. “This is not just for making money,” Norbert says. “This is also to continue the tradition.”
The building made a promise. Every morning, very early, Annelore keeps it.
anneloresbakery.com
@anneloresgermanbakery
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