It’s funny how a good family recipe and a church bake sale can turn a small catering operation into a dinner roll empire.

Don’t think it can happen? Just ask Patricia Schubert.

“By 1989, I was running a little bitty catering business that I called The Sliver Spoon,” she penned in her biography. “Everyone raved about the Parker House style rolls that I baked using the old family recipe inherited from (my grandmother), who called them “Everlasting Rolls.”

That year a friend asked her to donate a few pans of rolls to the church’s holiday frozen food fair.

“I sold 20 pans, and they put the rolls on the order form for the following year’s sale,” she recalls. “I had to cut off orders at 200 pans that year, and at 300 pans in 1991.”

After the booming third year, a roll empire, coined “Sister Schubert’s Homemade Rolls” was born in Troy, Ala. The company now produces in excess of one million rolls per day, which are distributed in thousands of locations across the United States.

In the year’s since her company’s rapid and vast expansion, Schubert has taken a smaller role in the ever-expanding commercial kitchen and also recently authored a cookbook.

Patricia “Sister” Schubert will be in Demopolis Friday, Feb. 26 at The Mustard Seed signing copies of her cookbook, “Cast Your Bread Upon the Waters”, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

“I’ve poured my heart and soul – along with generous helpings of delicious family recipes – into the 180 pages of this glossy hardcover cookbook, which resonates with the comfort of family and food that I learned from five generations of great cooks,” she said. “The book tells the story of how I started Sister Schubert’s Homemade Rolls based on my grandmother Leona Henderson Wood’s heirloom recipe for “Everlasting” yeast rolls, along with the title to my wood-paneled station wagon and a lot of elbow grease. And of how Sister Schubert’s grew from a tiny, home-based company into a national brand with three state-of-the-art bakeries and hundreds of employees.”

You may purchase copies of the book at The Mustard Seed.