Leenia, kolaches are found all through Central Texas (I lived in Temple for a while, about 60 miles north of Austin) and for starters you'll find good bakeries anywhere you find a Czech fraternal organization call SPJST that has halls like you'll find for Elks or Eagles in other American cities. Interesting - I looked them up and there is one in Fort Worth. Dallas and Fort Worth and most of the area up to the border but not in the panhandle are "North Texas." The Panhandle is the Panhandle. Central Texas to the south of us is where you find Hill Country that is actually areas where batches of fossilized coral (harder than limestone) kept their level while the surrounding limestone was eroded by creeks and rivers so any those flat-topped hills (not quite mesas) with all of the lovely valleys around them are a popular tourist destination.

The Valley (the Rio Grande Valley) isn't really a valley so much as a large region with an agricultural focus that called for the naming of the area for business purposes. And then there are West Texas (huge, and as Leenia said, not to be confused with West, Texas, that is on the edge of North and Central Texas and is most importantly at the I-35 split where it heads north as I-35W to Fort Worth and I-35E to Dallas) and East Texas (where all of the pines in the Texas Piney Woods and the Bayous and swamps and real lakes and such can be found.)

When Texas joined the union in 1845 they stopped being a sovereign nation and reserved the right to break into five states. Every now and then someone threatens, but as you can see it has never happened.

When friends come to visit I drive them around the region; last visitor I had for that kind of road trip was Joe Offer, and we went through Cleburne where I was hoping to find the little kolache bakery on the courthouse square that I've taken people to before. It was gone, but we did find kolaches in the monster-sized HEB grocery store. (And if you want to use a business as an excellent example of a community partner, look no farther than HEB, who has trucks ready to stage the moment a hurricane happens down here and has been huge in helping area food banks.)

The place has grown on me, though I wasn't born here and don't consider myself a real Texan like a lot of immigrants to the state. When you start a thread about barbecue, get my attention and I'll point you to a gazillion great little hole-in-the-wall grill joints. :)