Here is a look at how the bakery was handed down through five generations and what kept the family going all these years.
Rudolph ‘Rudie’ Schaaf
Rudolph Schaaf, with his father and brother (his mother died the year before), came to Dayton from Baden, Germany when he was 10 years old in 1895 to join his aunt and two brothers who were already here.
After finishing school at 12 years old, he worked odd jobs for awhile before getting into baking. After 10 years in bakeries, he went into business for himself, deciding to specialize in pretzels.
The bakery began with Rudie opening Gem City Pretzel on Warren Street in 1906.
It was soon known as Schaaf Pretzel and Baking Company, and from 1915 to 1926, Schaaf’s bakery was at 1318 Wayne Ave.
The bakery also operated a stand in the old downtown Arcade for years.
Emma Smales
Emma was about 28 when she took over the business from her father.
She moved the bakery to its current location at 210 Xenia Ave. in 1926. She also renamed it as Smales Pretzel Bakery, using her married name.
Credit: Emma Smales
Credit: Emma Smales
Helping her at the bakery were her sister, Marie York, and her daughter-in-law, Eva Schaaf. Some Saturdays the trio twisted as many as 9,000 pretzels.
By then, they were turning out from 2,000 to 5,000 soft pretzels a day just for their Arcade stand alone.
Charles “Charlie” Smales, grandson of the pretzel patriarch and then the bakery manager, took over the next step after the trio twisted the dough.
He dipped the pretzels in boiling soda ash water, put them on a salted “peel” — the paddle with a long handle used to put them into the heart of the huge brick oven.
After 15 minutes, he pulled them out. If he wanted hard pretzels, they stayed in the oven five more minutes and then moved to a second, slow-drying oven.
Ellen, Charlie’s wife, would grab the sacks of baked pretzels and make truck deliveries.
By this time, Rudie Schaaf was 82 and enjoying retirement.
Charlie Smales Sr.
Charlie was the son of Emma Smales.
When he returned home from serving the country during World War II, he went from manger to owner in the 1950s.
Charles ‘Chuck’ Smales Jr. and Lawrence ‘Larry’ Smales
Charles Smales Jr., succeeded his father in the early 1980s. He helped get Smales pretzels into local grocery stores and shops.
His brother, Larry Smales, took control in 2002.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Chuck and Larry Smales were Rudie’s great-grandsons.
Larry said in a 2003 Dayton Daily News interview that twisting pretzels is an art.
“Not everyone can do it well. It seems I was born to do it, though. I was twisting pretzels when I was 5 or 6 years old,” Larry said.
He recalled in a 2010 interview that as a boy he sold pretzels to legions of NCR employees on their lunch breaks.
Credit: Emma Smales
Credit: Emma Smales
“I’d sell a hundred pretzels in the seventh or eighth grade,” he said.
Larry had five daughters, but at the time, none of them expressed much interest in one day taking his place at the bakery. It was unclear if the family business would continue.
Emma Smales
In 2015, Emma Smales became the fifth generation in her family to own the bakery.
She was named “Emma” after her great-grandmother and is the great-great granddaughter of Rudie Schaaf.
In a 2018 Dayton Daily News interview, Emma credited her great-grandmother with modernizing the pretzel shop:
“When she took over from my great-great-grandfather (Rudie Schaaf), the business was in shambles. I really credit her for the modern version of what we are today.”
She was working in Los Angeles when she and her fiancé at the time, Joe Middlesworth, (now husband), decided to move back to Dayton to take over the business from her father, Larry.
Emma said in a 2016 interview that she’d like to one day pursue a career in public heath, but is glad to keep her family tradition going and hopes to pass it down to her future children.
“It is what I tell people. My family owns a 100-year-old pretzel bakery,” she said. “I don’t think of this is as job. I grew up here. I remember watching my grandfather bake pretzels.”
Emma and Joe now have a daughter, Avenelle Middlesworth.
Credit: Knack Video + Photo
Credit: Knack Video + Photo
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