Lent is the 40 days in between Ash Wednesday and sundown the day before Good Friday wherein, in Catholic tradition, you’re not allowed to eat or drink or do anything that would be considered fun. This is the opposite of Protestant tradition, where you do not eat or drink or do anything fun at any point in the year (put your pitchforks away - I come from a long line of German Lutherans).
Because many Catholics throughout the world use Lent to exhibit self-restraint and abstain from things such as meat, desserts, soda, coffee and (more recently) social media - the Tuesday before Lent begins is, in many cultures, a day to have a rollicking good time. Even if you are not Catholic, French, Italian or Brazilian, you will know of holidays such as Mardi Gras (wait for next week) or Carnival, where cities turn into massive parties.
To accompany the merriment, many Catholic cultures around the world have created a variety of desserts that serve the purpose of cleaning out the cupboard of things such as cream, sugar, eggs, fruit or lard before Lent begins. Some examples of these confectionery weapons of mass destruction include King Cakes from New Orleans (wait for next week), German fasnachts, Italian fritoles and pancakes! But the most relevant of these for Michiganders is the humble (but massively caloric) paczki.
Paczkis are a type of jelly-filled donut originating from Poland, consisting of some of those aforementioned Lent-incompatible ingredients - lard, sugar and fruit. Like many other types of donuts, dough is rolled into ball shapes, filled with fruit jellies either by hand or (for mass production) through a machine and fried in oil. The result is a sweet dessert with a crisp outside, fluffy innards and a sugary center. Some traditional flavors include marmalade, plum and rose. If you’re feeling extra crazy, you can finish your paczki with glaze or powdered sugar.
Alongside the waves of Polish immigration to the Midwest and Canada came the paczki. Bakeries in cities such as Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland and Detroit celebrate Paczki Day on Fat Tuesday, providing the dessert to folks, irrespective of Catholicness or Polishness.
One of the more famous Polish communities in Michigan is Hamtramck, and several bakeries in the Detroit neighborhood are famous for their paczkis. Just scrolling online will yield plenty of independent bakeries throughout Michigan participating in the holiday, including some in our community. If they happen to run out though, don’t worry, Meijer or Wesco usually always has some.
Sadly, I cannot give any personal recommendations. After getting sick off a donut when I was five years old, even the smell of this kind of fried dough is enough to make me hurl. In exchange, I can offer my Oma’s Berliner recipe. While German, a Berliner is still a jelly-filled donut enjoyed by Catholics on Fat Tuesday (or New Year’s Eve, if you’re Lutheran).
You can start with any basic yeast-bread dough, but here’s my family’s.:
1. Slightly warm up ½ cup of milk
2. Add 1 package of yeast and 2 tsp of sugar to milk
3. Let sit in a warm place for 5 minutes or more
4. Take 2 cups of flour and stir in with the yeast
5. Stir in 1 room temperature egg, ½ stick of melted butter and a little salt. Use a little more lukewarm milk in water to help stir.
6. Let rise
7. Add 2 more cups of flour and another splash of water or milk
8, Let it rise again
9. Beat well
10. Roll out the dough to a ¼-inch-thick rectangle
11. With half of the dough, make circular impressions with the rim of a glass, but don’t cut them out yet.
12. Put about ½ tsp jelly in the middle of the circles
13. Spread an egg wash or more milk around the circles and cover with the other half of dough
14. Take the glass and punch out the jelly-filled donuts and seal the edges
15. While you let the dough rise a little more, heat a pot of oil until hot
16. Submerge each side of the donut until golden brown, remove from the oil, and coat each side in powdered or regular sugar
17. Enjoy (with the proper amount of Protestant or Catholic guilt)
And don’t ask me how to pronounce paczki - whichever version you choose (poonch-key or pawnch-key) will inevitably be “the wrong way.”
