50 Years of Baking Bliss

By Angie Johnson-Schmit

Flour Stone bakery is Prescott Valley, Arizona's go-to bakery for fresh, handmade bread, danishes, pastries and custom cakes.

Now in its second year at the Prescott Valley Town Center location, Flour Stone has also become a local favorite for a quick breakfast or lunch. The husband and wife team behind Flour Stone, Igal and Kim Blumstein, have made it their mission to bring the best baked goods possible to the community, and they are succeeding.

Making good quality fresh baked goods is time and labor-intensive work. It’s not a job for night owls, as bakers get up well before the crack of dawn. Igal does all of the baking at Flour Stone and he wakes up at 2:30 a.m. to get to the shop by 3 a.m. “First thing in the morning I make cinnamon rolls and pecan rolls,” he said. After proofing and baking the pastries for the morning, he stocks the showcase and grabs a quick cup of coffee. Bear claws and danishes, or “snails” as Igal calls them, top the list of most popular pastries.

Once his morning staff arrives at 6:45 a.m., Igal turns his attention to baking bread for the day. He usually makes four or five varieties of bread daily, including sourdough, marble rye, caraway rye, English toasting bread, and cinnamon raisin bread. On Fridays, he also makes hand-braided challah. Customers especially love Flour Stone’s sourdough and cinnamon raisin bread, with these two varieties frequently selling out.

While their bread is sold directly to walk-in customers, they also incorporate it into their café items. “We use those breads for our grilled sandwiches,” said Kim. “All of the bread that he makes, we sell, but we also use it in our menu.”

Several local restaurants, including Gabby’s Grill and The Squealing Hog in Prescott Valley, buy Flour Stone’s bread or hamburger buns for use in their own restaurants.

Before the start of the weekend, Igal begins baking the cakes and cupcakes. “Because a lot of our orders (for custom cakes) are toward the end of the week…we typically have a full day devoted to cakes and cupcakes,” said Kim. Besides custom cupcake orders for individuals, they also regularly make cupcakes for the popular arcade and children’s party venue, In the Game.

Custom cakes are a relatively new addition to Flour Stone’s services. Their first wedding cake was made for their son’s wedding in 2018. Kim noted that while she has worked in bakeries since she was 16, she didn’t start professionally cake decorating until years later. “When we started, I was kind of decorating and she watched and then she picked up a bag and started decorating also,” said Igal. “And I learned that she is very, very talented and very artistic.” Playing to their strengths, Igal bakes the cakes, while Kim is in charge of decorating.

Igal has been working in bakeries for over half a century. He got his start working with his father at Cousin’s Bakery in New Britain, Connecticut when he was 13 years old. His first job was working as a “cleanup boy.” He came to work every day after school and set to cleaning the bakery and preparing dozens of cake and cupcake pans. He was quickly given more responsibilities, including frying the donuts and eventually taking over braiding the challah, a traditional Jewish bread made by braiding six strands of dough.

Flour Stone Bakery has that love of family baked into their pastries, bread and cakes. Igal and Kim are dedicated not only to their craft, but to the customers and community they serve.

His family immigrated to the United States from Israel when Igal was 11. He spoke no English when he first arrived, making school life difficult. He was so unhappy that he wanted to drop out. “My dad said, either school or work,” said Igal. “You don’t go to school, you have to get a full-time job.” It was an easy call for Igal and he chose work. While he loved working as a baker, his lack of a high school diploma bothered him. Ten years later, he took and passed the General Educational Development (GED) exam.

Igal tried his hand at a few other things, but quickly discovered he was happiest working as a baker. He met his wife, Kim, while working at a bakery in California. “I was his clerk and he was the manager,” said Kim. The couple married two years later.

After they started a family, they decided to move to Arizona. “My dad was originally from the Prescott area,” said Kim. After coming back for a wedding, Kim and Igal decided to move permanently to the area in 1998.

Igal took a job in the bakery at Safeway in Prescott. He went on to become bakery manager and worked in management at several Safeway bakeries in the area for about 12 years. After the Safeway bakeries stopped making their baked goods on premises and went to frozen, Igal and Kim decided it was time to open their own bakery in Mayer.

The couple decided to call their bakery Flour Stone as a play on their last name. “In Jewish or German, ‘blum’ means flower, not flour, but flower, and stein is stone,” said Igal.

At the heart of Flour Stone Bakery was the desire to “do something together as a family,” said Kim. She went on to note that all of their children and their wives have worked at the bakery, as well as a niece and a nephew. “We had our niece’s graduation party at the bakery in Mayer…we had Ben’s (their son’s) birthday party there,” she said.

Flour Stone Bakery has that love of family baked into their pastries, bread and cakes. Igal and Kim are dedicated not only to their craft, but to the customers and community they serve. When flour, sugar and yeast were hard to find in 2020, they stepped up and started selling those staples along with their baked goods. When Kim mentioned on her personal social media account that Flour Stone was having trouble finding eggs, their grateful customers returned the favor. “Such a huge outpouring of people that brought eggs to the bakery,” said Kim. “We have been very, very blessed and we don’t take any of that for granted.”

Igal Blumstein’s Raspberry Susans

Serves: 12

Method: Baking

Minutes: approx. 15

Difficulty: 2/10

Ingredients

3 cups sugar, 3 cups butter, 3 cups shortening, 2 tbsp. salt, 9 cups cake flour, 1 tbsp. baking powder, 3 eggs, raspberry or desired fruit filling

Instructions

• Cream butter, sugar, shortening and salt together until smooth, mix in eggs and vanilla. Mix for two minutes on low speed.

• Add in dry ingredients and mix for another two minutes.

• Roll dough into 2-inch diameter log shapes and refrigerate overnight. You should have approximately 4 logs.

• Remove from refrigerator and cut dough into 1.5 oz pieces.

• Press thumb into center of dough to form a well. Dipping thumb in water will help to not stick to the dough.

• Fill with raspberry filling or any desired filling.

• Bake for 9 minutes at 350°.