Ex-Milwaukeean earns bragging rights at State Fair
Former Milwaukeean Frederick Kaimann, 38, revealed his sweet tooth with his very first recipe, concocted when he was 6.
His creation involved putting bits of a sweetened cereal inside an open-faced ice cream sandwich.
Unlike the case with most children, however, this sweet tooth led to more than just potential cavities and dentist bills.
Most recently, it helped lead to Kaimann’s winning the first prize for his challah recipe at this year’s Wisconsin State Fair.
But sweetness may not have been the only appeal of his recipe. “I don’t like a flaky, airy challah,” said Kaimann, who now lives in Highland Park, N.J. “My preference is for a dense, rich, almost cake-like challah. That’s what this is.”
Kaimann also took a first prize for English muffins. But challah is “the bread I make best. The bread that rabbis ask me for is my challah,” he said.
To win a top prize at the Wisconsin State Fair means he has attained “the pinnacle of achievement in craft or culinary skill,” he said.
As a “fourth generation Wisconsinite,” he had visited the fair “since I could walk,” and he always “admired the achievements of the people who are there.”
But when he began competing in 2004, “little did I know how humbling it would become to rub shoulders with some of the greatest home cooks imaginable,” he said.
“The non-professional cooks of Wisconsin are phenomenally talented,” he continued. “I learned so much being in their company, listening to their stories and seeing their food…. Wisconsin is a great baking state.”
To win this competition is “certainly a highlight for the year, if not many years,” Kaimann said. In fact, he said he might not compete again after this.
“My bread has been recognized in one of the most difficult competitions for its quality,” he said. “Where would I go from here?”
Action in the kitchen
Kaimannn is the son of the late Julie Kaimann Marks and the late Richard Kaimann. He grew up in Bayside and received his Jewish education at Congregation Sinai.
He said that as a child he was always getting “tripped over in the kitchen” because “that’s where I hung out…. That’s where the action was.”
His vocation, however, went in a different direction. He grew up interested in cultural things, particularly music — he had his own subscription tickets to the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra as a child — and art.
After graduating from Nicolet High School, he went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and majored in art history. “The idea was to go to college, not to get a job, but to learn how to think,” he said.
Nevertheless, he began writing arts criticism for the Daily Cardinal campus newspaper, and doing freelance writing for the Wisconsin State Journal. He decided that “journalism was awfully fun,” and so sent resumes to newspapers upon graduation.
After working as classical music, art and dance critic for the Birmingham News, Gannett newspapers in New Jersey and on a freelance basis, he joined the staff of the Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., where he is now an editor.
But this didn’t end his interest in cooking. He “took up baking” as a sophomore in college as “a way to slow down” and take breaks from studying. “When you’re baking, you have to let bread rise, then punch it down and shape it after an hour or two,” he explained.
He has since branched out to the point that “I can cook anything you can imagine…. It gives me great satisfaction to feed someone and see the enjoyment in their faces while eating good food.”
He cooks for his family — including his wife Jennifer Senick and son Julian — and has prepared many Thanksgiving and Passover meals.
He also helps prepare food for homeless and impoverished people, including Christmas dinners. He said that “nearly every time” he visits Milwaukee, he volunteers at a soup kitchen.
In 2004, Kaimann decided as a New Year’s resolution to compete in the Wisconsin State Fair. He “took a week off work, packed my kitchen, flew to Wisconsin, set up in my grandmother’s kitchen, and went to work,” he said.
He won two fourth prizes and a third prize; but because entries are due more than a week before the fair begins, he had to return to New Jersey and missed the event.
He competed again in 2006, this time sending his foods by Federal Express to family members or friends who would deliver it to the judges. However, a thunderstorm dropped rain into the warehouse at the Newark airport, and “my breads and pretzels and things rotted.”
Nevertheless, he was able to send his jellyrolls in successfully, and those won a second prize.
This year, “things went perfectly,” he said. He said it cost him about $63 to send in his challah and English muffins, but “the bragging rights in my family are well worth it.”
When asked if he might now move into restaurant criticism, given his expertise in food, Kaimann said he couldn’t do it.
While he belongs to a Reform synagogue and doesn’t keep strict kashrut, Kaimann said he doesn’t eat shellfish or pork and doesn’t mix meat and dairy foods. “Without seafood or pork, vast swaths of menus go out the window,” he said.
As for competing in New Jersey’s State Fair, Kaimann said that event “pales in comparison” with the fair in Wisconsin, where “the agricultural tradition and its importance in the economy is far greater.”
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