The Lakehouse Bakery

10/08/2026

The first two batches of the October Bread of the Month Oatmeal Raisin, sold out the day we baked them. So we did the only reasonable thing we could do and made more.

There's plenty on the shelf today.

Plump raisins in every slice, a hearty crumb, a hint of cinnamon and a crust topped with toasted oats. It makes serious toast, a killer grilled peanut butter and banana, and some of the best French toast you'll ever make at home.

All our other favorite breads are on the shelf too, so grab a loaf for the week while you're here. If you miss it today, don't worry, it will be here all month.

Open today 9 to 4.
1534 Sugarloaf Lake Rd, Chelsea

10/08/2026

ANSWER: B) Pink!

The Butter Wars were real.

When margarine showed up in America in the 1870s, the dairy industry went after it hard. Six states banned it outright, and Michigan was one of them. Others, including Vermont and South Dakota, passed laws requiring margarine to be dyed pink, so it would look about as appetizing as a pencil eraser.

The U.S. Supreme Court struck the pink laws down in 1898.

That did not end it. Wisconsin kept its ban on yellow margarine until 1967.

For the record, we buy real butter by the 36 pound case. No dye required.

10/07/2026

TASTY TRIVIA TUESDAY!

To protect the butter business, some U.S. states once passed laws forcing margarine to be dyed a specific color. Which one?

A) Blue
B) Pink
C) Green
D) Black

Drop your guess below. Answer tomorrow!

10/04/2026

10/03/2026

Two Sundays coming up at the bakery, and ten seats each, because that is how many people fit around the bench.

October 11, 2 to 5: Breakfast Pastries. Cinnamon rolls and sticky buns, start to finish. You mix it, you roll it, you leave with what you made and the recipe to do it again.

October 18, 2 to 5: Easy as Pie. Crust, filling, crumb. Six weeks before Thanksgiving, which is not an accident.

Both $85. No experience needed, nobody is judging your crimping, and every skill level shows up to these. We have had people who bake every weekend and people who have never made a dough in their life at the same table.

10/03/2026

Yesterday Washtenaw County named us a Food Hero for Food Waste Prevention Week, and we want to say thank you properly.

We compost and we partner with Too Good to Go. Composting isn't glamorous, but it really helps reduce food waste and the environment. With Too Good to Go, someone gets real food on its last Best Buy date who will enjoy it rather than throw it in the trash. 389 bags in the last year alone. It used to be the worst part of closing and now we look forward to it.

It's not complicated. It is just paying attention. Thank you to Autumn and the Materials Management team for noticing.

10/02/2026

The freezer is changing over.

In a few days it fills up with pot pies, pasties and pizza for the cold months. Before that can happen we have to empty it, and what is in there right now is the last of the Fr'Obie-O's.

Two Obie-O cookies, the molasses and ginger and cinnamon ones, with Blank Slate Vietnamese cinnamon ice cream in the middle. Real butter, King Arthur flour, actual spices.

$5 today and tomorrow. Normally $6.

There are 20 left. That is the whole supply. When they are gone they are gone and they are not coming back until it is warm again.

Open until 4 today and tomorrow, then the freezer belongs to winter.

10/01/2026

Cinnamon coffee cake. Out of the oven this morning for National JIFFY Day.
Cinnamon ribboned through the middle, crumb topping, baked in a paper mold so it goes straight from our counter to your table.
$10 each. At the bakery until they are gone.
Open until 4. 1534 Sugarloaf Lake Rd, Chelsea.
chelseamich chelseamichigan thelakehousebakery scratchbakery shoplocal michiganmade bakerylife smallbusiness

10/01/2026

Happy National JIFFY Day!!

To help celebrate, we made a Cinnamon Coffee Cake with their sweet pancake mix. $10 for a 9" deep coffee cake! (while supplies last)

Chelsea Milling Company has been in Chelsea since 1901. That is 125 years, four generations, still family owned, and to this day they have never run a single national ad.

It started with Mabel White Holmes, watching two motherless boys eating bad store bought biscuits, decided they deserved better, and invented the first prepared baking mix sold in this country. A woman in Chelsea, Michigan changed how America bakes, and most of America has no idea.

Now we know some of you may be already typing. Yes, we are the bakery that says if it wasn't in Granny's pantry we don't use it. A box of JIFFY was in Granny's pantry, it was their corn muffin mix! We are proud to support a family business that's four miles away who have spent 125 years refusing to cut corners to grow faster. We will stand behind that all day.

Here today while it lasts. Open 9 until 4.

Happy JIFFY Day, neighbors.

10/01/2026

Trivia answer: the shell is genuinely poisonous.

Cashews belong to the Anacardiaceae family, which also includes mango, pistachio, sumac, and poison ivy. Every one of them produces urushiol, the same oil that gives you the rash after a walk in the woods. In a cashew it sits in the shell.

So the shell has to come off before it ever reaches you, and that work is done by hand in most of the world, by people wearing gloves who still get burned. The CDC investigated an outbreak in 1982 where cashews were shipped in contaminated bags and roughly one in five people who ate them broke out in a rash.

Here is the part that surprises people most. The "raw" cashews at the store are not raw. They have been steamed or roasted to destroy whatever urushiol is left. A truly raw cashew is not something you want in your mouth.

One more thing. The cashew is not even a nut. It is a seed that grows hanging off the bottom of a fruit called a cashew apple, one seed per fruit, on the outside, which is a deeply strange way for a plant to behave.

If you react to poison ivy, that is also why mango skin sometimes gets you.