Kolache Trail: Loosen your belt and get ready to feast on all the kolaches your heart desires.

HOUSTON – In case you haven’t heard, let me be the one to introduce you to the only road trip your kolache-loving heart will ever need.

These aren’t just your everyday “kolaches” with sausage and cheese. No, these places give you an authentic taste of what a kolache really is.

According to Czech heritage, a traditional kolache is a sweet, yeast-dough pastry that is usually filled with a fruit jam. These Texas spots are serving them up the way it should be done.

Welcome to the Kolache Trail

Start up your car and head to the first of six spots along your route: Czech Stop

Located in West, Texas (between Waco and Dallas), this iconic bakery offers a massive variety of flavors including typical fillings like apricot, poppy seed or cottage cheese or more whimsical choices like Nutella or coconut cream.

Not to worry, because if you prefer the more popular savory options like sausage and cheese or jalapeño popper (aka klobasniky), the Czech Stop has you covered too.

Once you have had your fill there, hop back in your car and head south to La Grange, where you will find Weikel’s Bakery.

There you can pick up another assortment of traditional flavors or can stray from tradition and pick from other delicious fillings like strawberry or peach cream, pineapple and lemon.

If you need a bit of a palate cleanser after all those kolaches, Weikel’s also has a deli where you can try an assortment of sandwiches and other food items.

Don’t fill up too much because your next two stops are fairly close and you won’t have the luxury of a long ride to let your food digest.

Just a 16-minute drive from Weikel’s Bakery is Hruska’s Store & Bakery. There you can pick up everything from “from convenience-store essentials, to one of Texas’ best cheeseburgers, to 16 varieties of top-notch kolaches,” according to its website.

Once you have picked up your essentials, get back in your car (that, let’s be honest, is probably filled with kolaches to take home) and take a 30-minute drive to the Original Kountry Bakery. You can add to your stock of fruity kolaches or switch it up with some savory options pan sausage with cheese or ham and cheese. You can also pick up homemade bread including dinner rolls, hamburger buns and sweet bread like cinnamon raisin, banana or pumpkin.

I know you are probably full by now, but you can’t give up on the trail yet. There are just two stops left before you get back into the Houston area, and they are three you don’t want to miss.

Get back in your kolache mobile, unbutton your pants and head to The Kolache Shop in Clute, between Angleton and Freeport. The shop offers the standard fruit-filled kolaches you’ve come to love as you have traveled the trail, but you don’t want to sit out on the savory options, which include boudin and fajita and pepper jack.

About 20 minutes northeast of The Kolache Shop, you’ll find your final stop, the Two Czech Chicks Kolache Shoppe & Bakery.

On the menu, you will see options like pecan pie kolaches, s’mores rolls and pumpkin cream cheese rolls, alongside the more traditional fruit and berry-filled kolaches.

Now that you have had your fill of kolaches, you can head home, shed your pants and settle in for a long-awaited food coma.

Note: The original Kolache Trail featured eight locations, but two of those locations are now permanently closed.