Paczki Day!

Most know the day before Ash Wednesday as Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday. But to any good Polak, it's Paczki Day (pronounced poonch-key). No longer being in Michigan with access to paczki's around every corner, and being lucky enough to have substantial free time on my hands, I decided the only appropriate activity for me would be to make these sweet treats.

For those of you unfamiliar with the paczki, it is a traditional jelly doughnut-like sweet goodness treat served on the day before Lent begins (but way way better than a regular jelly doughnut). The idea is that during Lent you are supposed to be fasting, so to use up all the butter, sugar, eggs, etc.. you make paczkis. The traditional paczki is very large, very heavy, and very dense. I think the rumor on the street is that one paczki has about 1000 calories in it. After I read the recipe, I could see why, 20 egg yolks, 1 cup sugar, and 1 cup of butter, all that before it is deep fried. In my red Polish cooking guidebook I was able to find a recipe that seemed to be a bit lighter, so after consulting with Grammy, getting her approval and getting the inside secrets, I was ready to go.

The recipe called for 3 risings for the dough, so it's not great for those who are rushing home after work on Paczki Day. I bet that you could prep the dough the day ahead, keep it in the fridge and let it rise a bit when you get home and fry 'em up. I dug my heels in early afternoon. After two risings, I was ready to form the doughnuts. The thing that surprised me was how light and soft the dough was, it took no effort at all to roll it out, I was expecting a pizza like or bread like dough, but it was nothing like that at all. The recipe warned me that a regular jelly was too thin to use, but I went ahead anyways and used the jam from our fridge. Turns out the recipe was right. Seeing that disaster was immanent, I made half of the paczkis without any filling.

After they rose the third and final time, I thought that those with the jelly in them would surely hit the hot oil and explode with the jam pouring out. I therefore wanted to cook the plain ones first. So I heated the oil up and anxiously dropped in the first one and saw the perfect little bubbles around the edges, oh they looked good. They cooked quick, about a minute on each side to a golden brown, and I pulled them out on topped with some powdered sugar. I popped the jelly filled ones in the hot oil and to my surprise, they held up. I have no idea how, but they did. After a few minutes to cool we dug in. I had told myself that I would only have one (I rarely rarely rarely eat doughnuts and when I do, I never eat more than one). But two and a half paczki's later I had to call my mom and Grammy with tales of success. Pretty darn good paczki's. Mmm...especially warm ones. It's really too bad you can only make them once a year, or maybe its a good thing.

Here's the recipe I used, but just so you know, if you make them on any other day of the year besides Fat Tuesday, it's sacrilegious.

Paczki
1 1/2 cups milk
2 packages of active dry yeast
1 t salk
1/2 cup sugar
3 egg yolks
1 whole egg
1 t vanilla
1/2 t ground nutmeg
1 stick butter
4 1/2 cups flour (plus more as need for rolling/forming dough)

Scald the milk (my interpretation of what this is, is to heat the milk up in a pan until small bubbles form around the edges and then pull it off the heat) and cool to lukewarm (I interpreted this to be less than 110 deg F because above that the yeast will die). After the milk cools, add the yeast and let sit for a few minutes. Beat sugar and butter until fluffy, then add eggs, salt and flavoring. Add the flour and milk/yeast to the butter sugar mixture in alternating batches until it comes together. Put in oiled bowl, cover and allow to rise until double in size in warm location (it took me about an hour and a half), punch it down, knead, and allow to rise until double again. Roll it out/stretch it out, cut into desired size and fill with your filling of choice, JAM/JELLY IS TOO THIN (it'll just be a very thin layer in the middle of the paczki)! What I would actually recommend (which I didn't do) is to fill the paczki like they are traditionally done in doughnut shops, with a pastry tip. Allow to rise again (until you think they look ready to go, fluffy and good).

Heat Crisco (Grammy insists on Crisco or lard) to 375 deg F. Add a few paczkis and cook until dark golden brown and flip over (should only take a minute or so). Turn them only once. Pull them out of the oil and sprinkle with powdered sugar so it melts over the top.

Indulge just this one time per year and eat three.