Make Your Pączki at Home With This Traditional Polish Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What are the traditional Polish paczki flavors? ›

Powidła (stewed plum jam) and wild rose petal jam are traditional fillings, but many others are used as well, including strawberry, Bavarian cream, blueberry, custard, raspberry, and apple. Pączki have been known in Poland at least since the Middle Ages.

Pączki are pastries made from deep-fried flat dough with fruit or cream filling and are topped with a light dusting of sugar. The traditional fruit filling is prune, but others include apricot, lemon, blueberry, raspberry and custard.

Pączki are very rich donuts, deep fried and then filled with fruit or cream filling and covered with powdered sugar or icing. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent. Traditionally, Lent was 40 days of fasting, meaning only one meal a day and full fasting on Friday.

Any fried-in-the-fat pączki lover will tell you that a bismarck and a pączki are not one and the same. Nor is a doughnut and a pączki one and the same. Sure, they may look alike but that's where the similarity ends. Pączki are made with a richer dough that has more eggs and sugar and they're cut larger, without a hole.

The most popular paczki are custard filled or filled with fresh strawberries and cream.

It fluffs right back up." In a Smithsonian article from February of 2023, Bielinski noted that paczki dough is richer and denser than a doughnut. It's complemented by a sweet fruit preserve filling, a thin glaze on top, a hint of orange or lemon peel, or even a trace of rose. Feeling out of the loop?

Paczki dough is richer and heavier than what you'll find in a typical American doughnut. The richness can be chalked up to the ingredients: yeast, eggs, milk and plenty of butter.

Paczki vs Donuts

The difference between paczki and donuts is the ingredients in their dough. Paczki uses an extra amount of enriching ingredients, yeast, grain alcohol, and high-gluten flour. Together, these create a richer-than-brioche dough, but far chewier with little to no crumbs.

The difference between these and a basic doughnut is that paczki are made with a very rich, sweet yeast dough consisting of eggs, butter and milk. Sort of like a brioche doughnut, only better, if you can imagine!

A bombolone (Italian: [bomboˈloːne]; pl. : bomboloni) is an Italian filled doughnut (similar to a Berliner, pączek, etc.), eaten as a snack food and dessert. The pastry's name is etymologically related to bomba ( lit. 'bomb'), and the same type of pastry is also called "bomba" ( pl. : bombe) in some regions of Italy.

Should paczki be refrigerated? ›

Any paczki with a dairy filling should be stored in the refrigerator. Like other donuts, they're best fresh, but we eat them for a few days, and they are still tasty - just not as good as they are right after cooking them.

Did you know that there is a festive celebration called "Fat Thursday" (Polish: Tłusty Czwartek) before Ash Wednesday in Poland? Fat Thursday will be celebrated on February 11th this year. Traditionally, it was linked to the last opportunity for feasting before Lent.

Traditional foods include pączki (doughnuts), which are large deep-fried pieces of yeast dough, traditionally filled with fruit jam or rose petal jam (though others are often used) and topped with powdered sugar, icing or glaze. Angel wings (faworki or chrusty) are also commonly consumed on this day.

What's the difference between paczki and sufganiyot? In Poland, jelly doughnuts are called paczki which means flower buds. Traditionally, they were fried in lard which sets them apart from sufganiyot, which are fried in oil.

Grebe's Bakery

Additional flavors will include cinnamon sugar-coated apple, chocolate-iced buttercream, chocolate-iced custard, white-iced raspberry, sugar-coated raspberry, glazed blueberry, glazed sweet cheese, powdered sugar lemon and glazed prune. Pricing for all pazcki is $2.25 each or $25 per bakers dozen (13).