February 1, 2008 - 1:05pm
paczki time
Does anybody know a pastry recipe similar to paczki, the Polish doughnut that is made before the Lenten season? I used to live in Detroit and the Fat Thursday/Fat Tuesday paczki were melt-in-the-mouth superb. But I don't want to fry. Any ideas?
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I have plenty of Polish cookbooks with recipes for paczki, but I guarantee you they'll all require you to fry them.
They are always fried. Don't be afraid. If you have the right oil and the right temp, frying dough is the best way to create a paczki
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Redundancy is your friend, so is redundancy
So, I will try paczki, I'll fry. I went online and got a variety of recipes -- but mkelly27 you mentioned having the right kind of oil. Different recipes say either veggie oil, peanut oil, or the good 'ole lard from times past. Have you made paczki's and what did you use? Anet
High smoke point, minimal taste, doesn't break down as fast as straight vegetable. I've made Beignets only, but everytime I look into Paczki, someone gifts me a dozen or so.
Use a thermometer to keep tabs on your oil temps, fry them fast and drain them well. What filling will you be using?
Mike
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Redundancy is your friend, so is redundancy
I've a taste for the prune filling, my hubby requested raspberry, and growing up on an orchard I must work apple in. Wish me luck. Anet
I didn't see this thread before we (wife and I) made some this weekend. it was our first try and we used an authentic paczki recipe. Here are my observations after the fact:
1. Recipes for the dough are unnecessarily complex. Most of the recipes are from someone's baba and are over done with no input from real bakers. The dough is just a good brioche dough. Next time i will just make my pan doro dough. Tweek it if you want and add secret ingredients but it is fundamentally a brioche dough. Just make sure that you work up the gluten so you get some stringy'ness or you will get a too cakey of a crumb.
2. Some recipes call for adding the filling before frying and some call for slicing the paczki in half afterwards to put in the filling. Leave the filling out, fry them as rounds, let them cool completely (to make sure the center is fully set up), then fill with a pastry pag using a small slit in the side. Don't put in too much filling (2-3 t). If you are going to glaze them, do that while they are hot.
3. Use about 2oz of dough per paczki. Too much dough will make you have to cook them too long to get the centers done and that will get them too brown.
We put in home made black currant jam and they were great because the black current jam is very tart and thus cuts the richness and sweetness of the dough and glazing. I would always do something tart. The ones we buy at a Polish deli in Cleveland have raspberry, plum and apricot.
Paul
Paul Kobulnicky
Baking in Ohio
Thank you <pjkobulnicky> for the hints. My dough is on the first rise after I folded it (no punching for me) and I will use your directions for the filling and cooking parts. It's a terribly humid day here, been raining, and my dough needed extra flour; it's tacky but manageable. Anet
So, I'm tasting one and it's delicious. The dough was very nice to practice and to work with . . . though my frying needs some work. Too many overly brown ones. I did at the end just divide the pieces into fourths and made -- paczki nuggets! So next time I might try some other pastry -- that gets baked. Anet