Home of the Original Sheepherder Bread

Every winter weekend, the parking lot of one little bakery along Highway 395 in Bishop is jammed full of skiers’ cars.  Erick Schat’s Bakkery (that’s the way they spell it) which looks like an Old World gingerbread house, is a mandatory roadside stop for ten of thousands of Southern Californians driving to or from Mammoth.  Inside the customers walk up to the counter carrying armfuls of Sheepherder or Squaw bread, bags of cheese rolls and coffee cakes, bear claws and cinnamon rolls.  Schat’s became an institution because it has stood in Bishop for a long time, and because it’s very good.  Its original incarnation opened in Bishop a hundred years ago as a general store started by the Schoch family from Vienna, Austia.