Description

A brioche-like, jam filled pastry eaten to mark the last week before Lent

Ingredients

Scale

4 cups flour
2 cups boiling milk
1 packet of dry yeast
1/4 cup lukewarm milk
6 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 vanilla bean pod, split and scraped
2 teaspoons grated orange zest
1/2 cup butter, melted
flour, jam, deep fat for frying

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Instructions

Stir 1 cup flour into boiling milk
Remove from heat and beat until smooth
Cool
Dissolve yeast in the 1/4 cup milk
Add to the flour mixture
Stir and let stand half an hour
Cream egg yolks and sugar, add vanilla and orange rind
Stir into the dough when it begins to rise
Add remaining flour and butter and beat until it forms a sticky dough
Cover and let stand 45-60 minutes, until doubled in size
Turn out on a floured board, knead just a few times
Divide dough in half and roll to 1/4 inch thick if you’re sandwiching two pieces together 1/2 inch thick if you’ll be filling after cooking
Cut out circles
Place a teaspoon of jam, the fruit only, not runny syrup, on half of the circles
Cover with remaining circles, press edges together
Cover and let rise again for about 30 minutes
Fry a few at a time in deep fat, 340 -345 F for about 4 minutes, taking care not to burn the dough
Drain and serve rolled in powdered sugar, granulated sugar, or glaze

Notes

This cookbook layers the jam between two cutouts. If you have a long pastry tip, you could also pipe jam into paczki after frying, or slice your plain paczki and filled with whipped cream and berries, or glaze and top with candied citrus peel. I used this recipe to candy the peel from tangerine picked from our tree and this glaze by dipping warm pastry. I liked that the glaze was less messy to eat than powdered sugar.

Keywords: homemade fried baked air-fried paczki