This Amish Country Trailer Sells Enormous Pretzels and Doughnuts

You’ll catch the sweet scent of Merrybrook Baking Co.’s trailer before you see the treats that have patrons lining up outside. Based out of the village of Holmesville, the mobile bakery sets up at events, markets, businesses and churches throughout Holmes, Wayne and Ashland counties.  

Aside from its weekly specialty doughnut, Merrybrook Baking Co. keeps it simple with two core products: enormous hand-twisted pretzels and fresh, vanilla-glazed doughnuts. 

“[They] kind of complement each other, even though they’re two completely different products,” says owner Lane Troyer. 

When the Mennonite former schoolteacher met the Kauffman family who owned Auntie Ruth’s Doughnuts of east Tennessee, it marked the beginning of Merrybook Baking Co. The Kauffman family had been successfully selling doughnuts and pretzels based on family recipes, opening two brick-and-mortar shops. In 2022, Troyer worked out a deal to license the recipes for his mobile bakery. 

Everything is made from scratch, and the doughnuts are fried fresh, dipped in a scratch-made vanilla bean glaze and hung to dry on a custom-made stainless steel rack with metal rods — all inside the trailer. Both doughnuts and pretzels are made in multiple batches throughout the day.  

“If you’re grabbing a doughnut or a pretzel at 2 p.m.,” Troyer says, “you have every likelihood of it being just as fresh as grabbing one right when we open the window in the morning.”

For more information, visit merrybrook.co.

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