RACINE - It's 7 a.m., and already much of the work day has passed for Ben Bendtsen Jr. and the rest of his morning baking crew, which includes his son, Ben Bendtsen III, at Bendtsen's Bakery, 3200 Washington Ave.

"My day starts out at 2 in the morning," the artisan kringlemaker said. "But I usually get up an hour earlier, have a pot of coffee and get ready to go."

He points out an old photo on the wall of his father, Ben Bendtsen Sr., flanked by bakery founder Lauritz Bendtsen holding up what was at the time the biggest kringle ever created. Deep in the background of the shot you can see the massive rotating oven, which is still proudly in use today.

Across the street and down the block at 3311 Washington Ave., Don Hutchinson and a small crew at Larsen Bakery work together twisting out almond-filled raw dough into ovals along a conveyor belt. Soon many of the rings will be baked, frosted and sent out to stores and fundraising groups. But some of them will be frozen and packaged so consumers can bake fresh pastry at home.

"I grew up in the family business and ended up having the same aspirations," Hutchinson said. "We owe everything to kringle, really."

His father, Ernie, worked as a delivery boy in 1949 during the bakery's previous incarnation as Hendrickson's. Fast-forward to 1969 and the now-grown Ernie is buying the place from Einer Larsen, but keeping the name and recipes the same. The thriving business has remained in Hutchinson family hands ever since.

Mike Oleson of O&H Bakery stepped politely through throngs of people making morning purchases at the family's 1841 Douglas Ave. location. In the far background, a large crew works on shipping and retail orders in the main headquarters of the bakery. Oleson is soft-spoken and confesses to not being very good at interviews, but when he speaks of kringle he speaks with the same pride and conviction conveyed by others.

"We do a lot of morning business," Oleson said. "A lot of businessmen use them as calling cards. Some guys can't even show up at an office without one in their hands or the front office people will throw them back out."

Each bakery has its own bragging right: "longest family-operated," "first to offer as fundraisers" "farthest shipped on a global scale."

And each of the profiled bakers also has his own favorite filling of kringle. Ben Bendtsen Jr. likes raspberry sugar-top, Don Hutchinson likes almond and pecan, and Mike Oleson is particular to cream cheese filled.

Ben Bendtsen Jr. said that it's not so much a rivalry between family-run operations as acknowledgement of each other. Hutchinson has borrowed and loaned equipment to him, he has played golf with Mike Oleson and occasionally he catches breakfast with owner Michael Heyer of Racine Danish Kringle on the city's northern end and Charlie Ball of Lehmann's Bakery to the south.

But all these bakers continue a friendship started more than 50 years ago by their predecessors, many of whom Bendtsen points out can be seen in photographs for the Racine Bakers Club.

"There were 13 bakeries back in the thirties, so they would have bakers' bowling leagues, softball," Bendtsen said. "They all hung out together. We still do. We're all still friends."