As a child, Branya’s Bakery owner Jean Theile fondly remembers sitting in her busia’s kitchen watching her make paczki each year.
Her grandmother made each traditionally — hand-sized, about one-third the size of commercial paczki, either unfilled or filled with prune and topped with granulated sugar.
For years, her family used the same recipe — originally handwritten in Polish by her great-grandmother — to honor an ethnic tradition for home cooks to use their stock of butter, eggs, jellies, fruit and sugar before the start of Lent.
“She had an old cast iron skillet, 10-inch, a deep one,” she said. “And, she’d fill it with the fat she had and make them on the countertop.”
In the decades since, Theile has helped keep that family tradition alive by adapting the translated recipe for use with her husband Dennis at the bakery’s storefront in St. John where they sell thousands each year on Fat Tuesday.
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Last year, on Paczki Day, her bakery sold 5,268 paczki from its storefront there, she said. The decadent Bismarck pastry consists of two fried dough sides bound by a jelly-like fruit filling, topped with sugar. Since 2015, they have expanded sales from the prior Thursday through Tuesday, minus Monday when they are closed for prep time.
“It’s not something that you are supposed to have from Jan. 1 until Lent,” she said. “We got them on Fat Tuesday and she made them again for Easter Sunday. They were part of breakfast.”
Decades ago, Polish families “didn’t have Facebook to give up, or TV to give up,” Theile said. “So, they had to be reasonable. The idea was to give up those things that were considered lavish.”
“There was no way to keep it for the 40 days of Lent, because we didn’t have refrigeration,” she said. “So, they got rid of the sugars and the jellies and the preserves and so, you made this.”
Over the years, as paczki with nontraditional flavors like strawberry and custard became increasingly popular throughout grocery stories and bakeries in Polish enclaves like Northwest Indiana, Theile still felt beholden to traditional ingredients.
As a cook, she still advocates for the old-country fillings of prune, or apricot fillings. Her paczki are topped with granulated, not powdered sugar, commonly used commercially.
“Do I sell prune and apricot as top sellers? No,” she said. “But, I can’t do away with them.”
Her bakery’s paczki are also square-shaped, making them easier to cut and hand-fry, she said. Top sellers are usually raspberry or strawberry, followed by apricot, cheese and prune.
Calumet Bakery owner Kerry Moore estimates his store will make a “couple thousand” orders of the dozen paczki they make at their Lansing, Ill., store before shipping it to its other locations in Whiting and Chicago.
Moore said most of his customers also go for more familiar, and sweeter tastes. The best-selling fillings are strawberry, cream cheese or custard, Moore said. He said he has been making the pastry since 1981.
“I think a lot of (its popularity) had to do with a lot of people moving out of Chicago, the Polish neighborhoods,” said Craig Streicher, co-owner of Beck’s Bakery in Crown Point. “They kind of brought that tradition with them.”
The bakery still uses his German-American father-in-law’s recipe from over 30 years ago, he said.
Beck’s sells paczki three days per week from January through Easter, he said. They can take up to 700 dozen orders on Monday and Fat Tuesday alone. Best sellers include Bavarian cream, chocolate Bavarian and cream cheese. They also offer peach, blueberry and sell a new triple berry paczki this year, Streicher said.
“Everybody gets them, not just the Polish now,” he said.
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