A nostalgic taste of Polish baking.
I am the product of a mixed marriage. My mother was a Litvak (a Jew from the historical region of “greater Lithuania”—modern-day Lithuania, Belarus, parts of Latvia, Poland, and Ukraine), and my father was a Galitzianer (a Jew from Galicia— contemporary western Ukraine and southeastern Poland). Historically, there has been a stereotypical cultural divide between the two: Litvaks seen as more intellectual, favoring more savory food and Galitzianers as more emotional, favoring sweet foods. Needless to say, in this centuries-old feud, Galitzianers have not been looked upon kindly by the Litvaks.
My father was born in the town of Sambor, Poland— well, it was Poland then. Today the town is just inside the western border of Ukraine. My grandmother, Ruchel Strausser, had a bakery there, and as I wandered through Laurel Kratochvila’s new cookbook, “Dobre Dobre: Baking from Poland and Beyond,” I wondered which of these delectables my grandmother might have sold there or baked at home for the family.
Grandma Ruchel died when I was 16, so my memory of her baking is limited. I found myself on a nostalgia trip, however, salivating over the rugalach, kichelach (light-as-air bow tie cookies), hamantaschen, knishes, babka, apple cake, pletzl (onion flatbread), and, of course, challah that I do remember. But this is an eclectic set of recipes and not definitive in terms of Polish baking, Kratochvila asserts. The recipes are curated based on her “own travels, friends, family, research, and unapologetic affection for Polish baking.” I’m eager to try her Lodz Bread with Coffee and Raisins, Chanterelle and Smoky Cheese Danishes, Karpatka (Layered Choux and Cream Cake), Goose and Pumpkin Turnovers (finely diced turkey or ground beef may be substituted for the goose) and Chatka (Braided Egg Bread with Streusel, which, she writes: “might be the most common baked good in Poland.)” There’s even a recipe for matzo!
The book’s title comes from a Polish saying “Dobre Dobre, nie za slodkie”: good, good, not too sweet. (It must be a Litvak saying.) And, oh, the writing. Any cookbook that begins with: “I fell in love with Polish baking because I didn’t like the pickles in the Czech Republic” has got my attention. Spoiler alert: She snagged the pickles she craved in Poland and with them her husband! From there she “trained as a baker in Paris, opened her own bakery, wrote a cookbook, and never stopped returning to Poland. As a professional baker whose bakery focuses on Heritage Jewish baking,” she writes, “Polish bakeries and cake shops…have become my way of connecting to that culinary heritage in the wild.”
Through the centuries Poland has undergone many border changes, sometimes disappearing altogether. No matter how many generations of a Jewish family lived there, they never thought of themselves as Poles. As Kratochvila’s grandmother told her, “We were never Polish,” and as Kratochvila explains, “The terrible antisemitism in the country’s history made for a tricky relationship.”
While there has been much sharing of recipes between Poland and many other cultures through the years, and despite the fact that before World War II only ten percent of the Polish population was Jewish, “I’d posit that there is no greater influence on Poland’s bakery culture in the present day than the Jewish bakers of its past,” she notes. “While an exact number isn’t known, some speculate that until the second world war, up to half of Poland’s bakers were Jews. There was almost no city or town without at least one Jewish bakery, and it wasn’t unusual if half or even all the bakeries…were Jewish. Even if Jewish bakeries basically don’t exist in today’s Poland, their influence certainly does. The overlap of what is Jewish and what is Polish is so complete that there’s no point in trying to disentangle them. Rugalach, onion breads, apple cakes—everyone makes them, so what belongs to whom? Of course there was no answer to this question. Food is cultural and cultural borders are porous.””
Polish baking has had a global influence “from the New York bagel to pletzalej in Argentina to the French Baba Au Rhum,” she explains. “Populations exiled from Poland transmitted the baking culture to their new homeland, where it’s been reinvented time and again. Polish and Polish-Jewish traditions exist in bakeries from Chicago to Brooklyn, Tel Aviv to Melbourne, Bangkok to San Luis Potosi in Mexico. Among these bakeries there is massive variation. Some are holders of tradition, nearly frozen in time, like a language spoken by only a few on a desert island. Others, especially the North American Jewish bakeries, are the natural continuation of a baking tradition that has adapted in diaspora, absorbing new influences, tastes, and ingredients.”
Jewish Apple Pie (Szarlotka)
See note (right) if you don’t have a convection setting.
Although called a pie, “this is more cake than pie, made in a pie plate or springform pan spread with thick batter that leaks between the apples.”
2 pounds 3 ounces tart and firm apples, such as Granny Smith, Braeburn, or Cortland (8 to 10 medium apples), peeled, cored, and sliced into 1 1/2- to 2-inch chunks
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 1/4 cups sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1. Line base of 9-inch springform pan with parchment paper, then butter sides and coat with sugar. Preheat oven to 400°F with convection setting turned on.
2. Gently pile apples into pan, all the way to the top. No need to pack tightly.
3. In bowl of stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and 2 cups of the sugar on medium speed until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, then increase speed to medium-high. Beat about 5 minutes, until batter turns pale yellow. Reduce speed to low and add vanilla and salt. Add flour, mixing until batter is smooth. It will be thick but pourable. Pour batter over apples, covering top entirely. Using a spatula, smooth batter to edges of pan. If it doesn’t seem like enough batter, don’t worry. It will sink down among apples as it bakes.
4. In small bowl, mix together remaining sugar and cinnamon, then sprinkle evenly over pie. Bake 15 minutes, then lower heat to 350°F and continue baking another 45 to 55 minutes. Top will be a rich tan color and a knife inserted into the middle will come out clean but wet from the apples. If the top starts to get too dark, cover loosely with aluminum foil for remainder of the bake. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely before sliding a knife around edge of cake and undoing the springform sides. Serve at room temperature with vanilla ice cream or store covered in fridge up to 5 days, serving cold or reheating in oven.
Source: “Dobre Dobre” by Laurel Kratochvila.
Pletzl (onion flatbread)
Yield: 3 pletzls
Note: Kratochvila prefers a convection setting “for a faster more even bake. If you don’t have a convection setting, you may need to increase the baking time by about 25 percent and rotate your items as you bake.” Begin checking at 5 minutes.
This dough starts the day before you’re ready to bake.
If you can’t find the 00 pizza flour, it’s available online.
Dough
1 1/3 cups plus 2 teaspoons water
1 tablespoon honey
Tiniest pinch (1 g) instant yeast
3 1/3 cups Italian type 00 pizza flour
1/2 cup whole-rye flour
1 3/4 teaspoons kosher salt
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
Cornmeal, for dusting
Filling
2 medium onions, finely chopped (about 2 cups)
6 spring onions, finely chopped (about 1 cup)
1/2 cup olive oil
Toppings
2 tablespoon sesame seeds (optional)
1 tablespoon Nigella seeds (optional)
1 tablespoon poppy seeds (optional)
Flaky sea salt
1. Dough: In bowl of stand mixer, combine water, honey and yeast. Whisk until smooth. Add pizza flour, rye flour and salt and, with dough hook attachment, mix on low speed until all ingredients are incorporated. Increase speed to medium; continue mixing 8 minutes, or until dough is smooth and starts to pull away from sides of bowl. Turn speed to low; drizzle in olive oil in thin stream until entirely incorporated. (Dough will come apart and then return to a smooth mass within a couple minutes.)
2. Coat your palms with oil to prevent sticking; transfer dough into lightly oiled medium mixing bowl. Pick up dough with two hands and allow gravity to stretch overhanging dough under itself. Turn bowl and repeat until you have a smooth bowl of dough. Cover bowl loosely with tea towel, allow to rest 1 hour at room temperature. Then give dough another set of stretch and folds, cover bowl airtight with plastic wrap with some room for expansion, and let it rest in fridge 18 hours or up to 4 days.
3. About 3 hours before baking, remove dough from fridge and divide into 3 even portions. With oiled hands, form each portion into a tight ball, then place on an oiled surface, loosely covered with plastic wrap or an inverted bowl, and allow to rest about 3 hours.
4. Meanwhile, in a bowl, mix topping ingredients. Set aside.
5. About 1/2 hour before baking, preheat oven to 450°F with rack in middle and convection setting turned on. Line baking sheet with parchment paper and dust with cornmeal. Stretch 1 ball of dough, using weight of gravity, as thin as it can go before it becomes too unwieldy, then place on baking sheet. Continue stretching until you have a nearly transparent thin oval. Spread 1/3 of onion mixture evenly over dough. Sprinkle with seeds (if using), and flaky salt to taste. Repeat with remaining 2 balls of dough. Bake 5 minutes or until pretzel is golden brown and onions are sizzling. Remove from oven, and slide onto cooling rack. Repeat with remaining 2 balls of dough. Serve sliced as appetizer or snack, or as an accompaniment to salads or soups.
Jlife Food Editor Judy Bart Kancigor is the author of “Cooking Jewish” (Workman) and “The Perfect Passover Cookbook” (an e-book short from Workman), a columnist and feature writer for the Orange County Register and other publications and can be found on the web at www.cookingjewish.com.
