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
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.