Polish Breads

Bialy or Bialystoker Kuchen – a “bagel” from PL to USA

October 6, 2017 by polishhousewife 6 Comments

Picture the setting, it’s happy hour at a local watering hole, I’m meeting friends of friends. Everyone around the table, while we all have other professions, is interested in food. When my new friend found out that I write a blog about Polish food, he asked if I was familiar with the Bialy, which he pronounced be-alley.

He’d heard about the Bialy when his colleagues here in Tucson learned that he would be in New York City on business. While not available at the first bakery he tried, my new friend got directions to an old bakery in a neighborhood, outside of Manhattan, and found his Bialy.

He described the Bialy as like a bagel but better. It didn’t have the very crusty exterior, the inside was lighter and more tender, and the best part, it was topped with onions. The folks in the bakery told him that the Bialy has a short shelf life, about 6 hours, so that might be why there not as widely known as bagels, which come to think of it don’t have a very long shelf either.

The story goes that the Bialy comes from the city of Białystok (which means White Slope in Polish) in northeast Poland. Bialy is Yiddish and short for bialystoker kuchen, the Polish name of this roll. Biały is Polish for white and pronounced more like be-oway. (When I see the word, it’s the only way I can hear it in my head.)

The recipe moved to the United States with Jewish immigrants who were escaping the pogroms and Holocaust, although their popularity seems limited to the area of New York City. The yeast dough, which, unlike bagels, is not boiled before baking, gets a depression in the center that will be filled with onions, and maybe garlic, poppy or sesame seeds, or bread crumbs.

Mimi Sheraton has written a book on Bialys, The Bialy Eaters: The Story of a Bread and a Lost World (available via my affiliate link). Sheraton, a famed food writer, tells the poignant, personal story of her worldwide search for a Polish town’s lost world and the daily bread that sustained it.

Since Bialys have been referred to as bagels that aren’t boiled before baking, I used my bagel recipe and shaped the rolls with an indentation rather than a hole in the middle. They are fabulous. If you’re going to eat bread, this is what you want to have. The texture is lightly chewy, and the savory warmth of the topping adds a smidge of yummy interest to every bite. There are a lot of steps to the instructions, but don’t let that put you off. I easily whipped these up one evening after work. They’re so worth the effort!

Smacznego!

Lois

Bialy or Bialystoker Kuchen

Author: Polish Housewife
Prep Time: 2 hours 20 mins
Cook Time: 10 mins
Total Time: 2 hours 30 mins
Yield: 6
Category: Bread
Cuisine: Polish

Description

A gentler, less chewy version of a bagel

Ingredients

1 cup warm water (110 degrees F)
1 package active dry yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
2 1/2 to 3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons oil, divided
1/3 cup finely diced onions
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1/4 teaspoon poppy seeds
1/2 teaspoon sesame seeds
salt and pepper
1 egg

Instructions

Place water in a mixing bowl, sprinkle with yeast, stir in sugar
Let sit for about 5 minutes, until a foamy layer begins to form on top
Stir in 1 teaspoon salt and 2 cups of flour until combined
Add the additional flour to make a stiff dough, kneading for about 5 minutes
Grease a large bowl with one tablespoon of oil, add the dough to the bowl and turn to coat all sides with oil
Cover and let rise for about 90 minutes or until doubled in size
While the dough rises, saute the onion in 1 tablespoon of oil over medium-high heat until it just begins to get a little color
Add the garlic and cook for 2-3 minute
Remove from heat, add poppy seeds and sesame seeds, season with salt and pepper
Punch down the dough and divide into 6 portions
Gently stretch the surface of the dough, tucking it to one side and pinching together, to give you a smooth surface
Place the pinched side down on a lightly floured surface, cover and let rise for about 20 minutes
Preheat oven to 475 degrees
Make an indentation in the center of each bialy using your thumb or a tool
Place on a parchment covered baking sheet, spacing as far apart as possible
Fill the indentation with a spoon full of the onion mixture
Beat the egg with a tablespoon of oil and gently brush over the bialy
Bake for about 10 minutes, until golden with brown spots
Keep wrapped in plastic after the bialy cool, freeze if you’re keeping for longer than a day, but I doubt they’ll last that long

The tool I used to make the indentation in my Bialys is a mini tart shaper (available from my affiliate link)

Paczki for Fat Thursday (Tlusty Czwartek)

February 19, 2017 by polishhousewife 19 Comments

We ate Paczki for Fat Thursday when we lived in Poland, but this is the first year that I’ve made my own. Like everything else, homemade is always better. If I’m perfectly honest, I couldn’t understand the fuss about store-bought Paczki. It’s probably because I was, based on the appearance, expecting an American doughnut. I found the pastry itself too dense and bread-y and the jam too scant. Now that I’ve had homemade, I know that all of you who have enjoyed mama’s or babcia’s paczki were holding out on me!

My own Paczki? The outside is crisp; the dough is rich and delicate, like an orange scented brioche. The jam, in my case orange marmalade, really is just an accent. As I said, homemade is always better! So with the last week of Karnawal approaching, let me urge you to make your own paczki for Fat Thursday.

Although I’ve doubled the flour used, I’ve used the recipe from Polish Cookery, the translation of Uniwersalna Ksiazka Kucharska (the Universal Cookbook, published in the early 1900s) by Marja Ochorowica-Monatowa, which bills itself as Poland’s best-selling cookbook adapted for American kitchens. This was the first of my many Polish cookbooks. It’s translated and adapted by Jean Karsavina, originally published in 1958. I have to agree wholeheartedly with Ms. Karsavina’s remarks in the preface:

Poland, like France, is a country where people really know food. One can stop at a peasant home in the country, a wayside inn, a modest restaurant in a working-class neighborhood, and be served a meal with remembering. Good food is tradition. Polish hospitality is legendary.

Gone from the original book in Polish are the recipes for Roast Boar’s Head and Turkey Garnished with Two Dozen Roast Field Thrushes, and the original author’s assertion that the book’s purpose was to “give brides a knowledge of how cooking is done, so that they may supervise the servants properly.” This was essential, Ms. Montowa says because, “everyone knows how apt servants are to cheat, especially if the lady of the house makes no attempt to interest herself in planning menus or fails to check bills and accounts. If,” she tells us, “there is time on one’s schedule for singing lessons, piano practice, water coloring, and fine embroidery, surely there is also a half-hours each day which can be made available for one’s housewifely duties. . .” It’s a long way from my great-grandmother who was raising 10 children, homesteading with her cattle-ranching husband in the Arizona Territory at the time. 😉

Whether you are supervising the staff or making your own pastry in homage to a pioneer ancestors, I hope you’ll give Paczki for Fat Thursday a try this year, especially if you’ve never had homemade. Give Karnawal a good send off. My friend Klaudia tells me the nicest and most traditional jam to use it a rose jam, but you can certainly use other fruit jams or marmalade.

Smacznego!

Lois