Butter Maid Bakery is a 5th generation small family owned and operated bakery. Our products have been handmade the old-fashioned way with simple ingredients - just like Mom & Grandma baked - for over 150 years. Our history dates back to our first bakery in Ohio in 1903, and our 1800s bakery in the old country. We've been shipping kolachi and other baked goods to all 50 states & Military addresses since 2006, from our bakery right here in Youngstown, Ohio. When you order from our kitchen, we're going to treat you like you're here for Sunday dinner. We put immeasurable care into everything we do and are truly committed to baking and delivering the highest quality products.

It's all about bringing together the freshest, highest quality ingredients we can find, and taking the extra time and care to bake with them the old-fashioned way. Just like our great-great-grandparents baked, our products are handmade from scratch in small batches... we just make MANY small batches!

Real cane sugar and pure honey. No cheap high fructose corn syrup, beet sugar or artificial sweeteners. No dough from a factory, no "just add water" mixes or "just add anything" mixes. Sweet cream butter, eggs, milk, walnuts and pecans directly from farms. No cheap ingredients acting as fillers. We use only the highest quality ingredients you will truly taste in every bite.

And let's talk more about butter... As you would expect from our name, we use real butter. No cheap blends that call themselves butter. Great baked goods start with the best ingredients and there is no substitute for real, sweet-cream butter.

Baking in our family goes back over five generations and over 150 years. Dimitri Naumoff, shown above, owned and operated a neighborhood bakery in Europe prior to arriving in New York in 1903 at 28 years of age. He settled in Youngstown, Ohio. Dimitri was ambitious, he wanted to live the American Dream and make the lives of everyone around him better. He opened a neighborhood bakery on Rayen Avenue in Youngstown, which ended up burned to the ground by the mob/union.

Left with nothing, he decided to take a gamble. The story goes... he bet what little he had on a card game, and won big. He used that money to open Steelton Bakery, located down the road on Steel Street in the first little section of town developed West of Youngstown called Steelton. Dimitri's son Nicholas Charles, shown above c.1917, worked at Steelton Bakery and seems to have been brought to work at an even earlier age than I was, so I see that it ran in the family. Steelton was a neighborhood bakery that started with horse-drawn carriage and later grew to 20+ delivery trucks supplying corner stores, restaurants, bars, and home deliveries. Home delivery of bread was crucial throughout The Great Depression.  Nick's son, Nick Jr. (uncle Nick), remembers as a kid sitting on Uncle Walter's lap driving the delivery truck. Walter later opened Walter's Golden Crust Bakery on Mahoning Avenue.

In 1955, Nicholas Charles Naumoff sold his shares of Steelton Bakery and opened Butter Maid Bakery. In one of the country's first strip malls in a new & fast developing suburb, Butter Maid Bakery opened for business July 21st, 1955 in the Boardman Plaza in Boardman, Ohio.

We were proud to be one of the first tenants in the first major shopping center developed by Edward J. DeBartolo, legendary real estate entrepreneur who developed the first shopping mall concept. Edward J. DeBartolo Jr. is now recognized as one of the most successful owners in the history of professional sports, most notibly the San Francisco 49ers. The DeBartolo / York families can still be seen stopping by the Butter Maid counter for baked goods, and calling us up to ship them a package.

Nicholas Charles Naumoff is shown on the left in both the above and below pictures in 1955.

In 1959, Nick Sr. was no longer able to work due to an illness. Nick Jr., an 18 year old Senior in high school at the time, was sent in alongside his mother Mary to save the bakery from closing. Mary ran the front of the store, Nick the back of the bakery.

Nick Sr. & Mary (above, left) had five children who all worked at Butter Maid Bakery in the Boardman Plaza - Marilyn (right), Nick Jr, Sally (middle), James, & Donna. James met his high school sweetheart Gloria at the bakery, which led to the company policy of not dating in the workplace. Now retired from her profession, Gloria is now a major part of the current day to day operations & success, and they can still be seen arguing with each other at the bakery. Their children, Katie & Jeff (also above) both worked at the bakery, even at the time of the picture. 

During the 1980s shopping mall boom, Nick Jr. and James moved Butter Maid Bakery from the Boardman Plaza to the Southern Park Mall in 1984. Mary Naumoff (shown above) & Nancy Naumoff (wife of Nick Jr.) continued to play a major role in the day to day operations & success of Butter Maid Bakery.

In 2006, James & Gloria's son Jeff created www.buttermaidbakery.com in his college apartment. We started shipping anything and everything requested - cinnamon rolls, muffins, pies, cheesecake, brownies, cookies, and of course kolachi! We were now happy to reach all our out of town customers, and find many new ones! Over the years, steady growth of our online sales led us to refocus our efforts. In 2014, we made the very difficult decision to close all three locations and combine them into one large bakery, serving local business and online - and the Boardman Plaza was the perfect place. The decision felt like a huge gamble at the time, but then we remembered Great Grandpa Dimitri's gamble. Thankfully it proved to be an excellent move. Now that we weren't spreading ourselves thin in multiple locations, we were able to focus on delivering sweet memories nationwide. Rapid online growth soon spread us thin again, and we were forced to reduce our large selection to the best sellers. We learned that we should make fewer products and try to be the very best at making them.

Butter Maid Bakery has been family owned and operated since 1955. Today Nick Jr, James, and his son Jeff still make these products at the Boardman Plaza with our amazing team. With traditional recipes dating back to Europe in the 1800s, our family has been baking these products the old-fashioned way for over 150 years. We are truly committed to baking & delivering the highest quality baked goods made with the freshest, highest quality ingredients.

If you've never heard of some of these pastries, see what hundreds of thousands of happy customers are raving about. If our products are tradition in your family, we hope ours can bring back sweet memories! Relax and let us bake for you. Tell everyone you spent the whole day in the kitchen! We won't tell.

Thank you so much for enjoying our products, we really appreciate your business! If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, we love hearing from you! 

   ~ Gloria & Jim (mom & dad), Nick (uncle), Jeff (4th generation), Superman and the rest of the Butter Maid Family