RENICK -- Hall Hitzig loves to make people’s knees buckle and their mouths smile in delight.

As the owner and pastry chef of The Crazy Baker, it’s just part of his business.

“On all of our signs, packaging and Web sites, we describe ourselves as ‘A luscious experience.’ That’s because so much of our feedback is about how luscious we are,” Hitzig said.

For the past six years, Hitzig has been on what he can only describe as an adventure.

Hitzig said baking always was something he loved to do. Growing up in New York, his mother often would take him to European-style bakeries in the city where he would sample delectable desserts. Soon he was baking his own.

Baking was a hobby he cherished for many years, but he never thought of it as a career. After moving to West Virginia in 1986, Hitzig made his living working as director of maintenance for a local air charter company at Greenbrier Valley Airport. In the evenings, as a side job, he would bake desserts for local restaurants.

He worked at the airport for 16 years before deciding he was ready for a change. He talked with his wife, and they agreed that he should go to culinary school. He graduated from the L’Academie de Cuisine in Gaithersburg, Md., with honors and went on to receive additional training as a pastry chef in restaurants and resorts both in the United States and in Europe.

He returned to West Virginia with the goal of opening a bakery and, in August 2002, The Crazy Baker started.

“I guess we jumped in with both feet and have been going ever since,” he said with a smile, adding that the business grew by 8 percent last year.

The bakery is in an old kitchen cabinet factory just off of state Route 219 in Renick. The bakery is owned by one of Hitzig’s friends, Jeff Kessler, who uses half of the facility for his business, Jeff’s Breads. Kessler leases the other half to Hitzig.

Little in the old factory makes people think of furniture, though. Instead, all people see are massive industrial-sized mixers, massive ovens, rolling machines and cooking trays the size of card tables. A huge walk-in refrigerator/freezer in the back is where all of the raw materials for Hitzig’s craft are stored.

The business has become a true family operation with Hitzig’s wife, Amy, and son, Orion, helping in the bakery. One recent spring day, as Hall baked apple tortes for a nearby resort, his wife was packaging dozens of kulich, a type of Russian Easter cake that a Russian Orthodox monastery in Wayne County sells online. Orion, 20, was nearby, mixing eggs, sugar and butter for a huge batch of sticky toffee pudding.

“Orion is my No. 1 assistant,” Hitzig said.

His two other children — Alexander, 23, and Jaana, 25 — are not in the business. Instead, Alexander is a musician and Jaana is geology major in college.

Sticky toffee pudding, which is a rich date cake served with hot toffee sauce poured on top, is one of The Crazy Baker’s biggest sellers.

“It’s one of the most fun products to sell,” he said. “When we do tastings at trade shows and other events, we’ll give people a one-ounce cup with a little bit of the cake and toffee sauce, and when they take their first bite, I can literally see their eyes roll back and their knees buckle.

“It’s great when a group of women come in and all try it. They just ooh and ahh over it, and it’s fun to watch the aftermath and hear from them what a good product we have.”

The bakery also sells X-treme Brownies, which measure a quarter pound each and put brownies made from a store-bought mix to shame. Panforte, a traditional Italian confection, is loaded with spices, candied citrus and almonds. He also makes a flourless chocolate torte that he said is ideal for people who can’t eat wheat.

The Crazy Baker also sells homemade granola that includes organic oats, raisins and seeds.

“We try to do all organic when we can and when it makes a difference in the quality,” he said.

The Crazy Baker also whips up some desserts that are sold only at certain times of the year, including Stollen, a German bread-like Christmas cake, and kulich.

In the spring, when orders for a lot of the other desserts may be down, kulich keeps The Crazy Baker’s business flying. Two years ago, The Hermitage of the Holy Cross in Wayne County approached Hitzig about making the saffron-infused, fruit-filled cake. Hitzig agreed and made about 200 cakes for the monastery this year.

“We are grateful to The Hermitage for the spring business,” Hitzig said. “They are great people to work with, and we love being able to work with people who are in state.”

Hitzig said most of his business comes from two areas: selling online to customers and supplying desserts to restaurants, such as the Stardust Café and The Irish Pub, which are both in Lewisburg; Café Cimino in Sutton; Blossom Deli in Charleston; Stonewall Resort in Roanoke; Tamarack in Beckley; and Carolina Crossing Golf & Fitness in South Carolina. His Web site, www.thecrazybaker.com, has online ordering for most of his desserts and offers special packaging if the order is going to be used as a corporate or personal gift.

Hitzig has also started his own blog, “The Essence of Food,” at essenceoffood.wordpress.com. The blog explores Hitzig’s love of food and hopefully starts interesting conversations about the essence of food.