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Paczki Day - Yum!
Tomorrow, Tuesday February 21, is Mardi Gras, a day when Catholics and other Christians indulge in fatty, sugary foods before the fasting and sacrificing of Lent. One of the day’s most popular treats are paczki and Hamtramck is the place to get them. Read on to learn more.
Mardi Gras is French for Fat Tuesday, and in Hamtramck it is called Paczki Day. It is the final day of Carnival season which this year began on January 6.
Paczki (pronounced poonch-key) is plural, and the singular is paczek (pronounced pon-check).
This year, in Hamtramck you can get paczki that are not only filled with the usual fruit or custard but also with alcohol. On February 21 at Small’s you can eat a Paczki Bomb which is filled with blueberry vodka and custard filling, or vanilla vodka and raspberry filling, or Bailey’s Irish Cream and custard filling.
If you really know your paczki, then you know the difference between paczki and jelly donuts. But just in case you’ve always been curious, the difference is in the dough. Paczki dough has an extra amount of enriching ingredients like yeast, grain alcohol or rectified spirit, and high-gluten flour, making for a richer and chewier dough.
Before cooking the paczki dough, a small amount of rectified spirit is added to the dough and as it evaporates, it prevents the absorption of oil deep into the dough. Rectified spirit, also called grain alcohol or neutral spirit, is highly-concentrated ethanol (95 percent) that has been purified by repeated distillation. Click here to see how a bakery in Warsaw, Poland makes paczki.
Interestingly, in Poland they don’t celebrate Fat Tuesday, but instead celebrate Fat Thursday. Tłusty Czwartek is Polish for Fat Thursday and is celebrated on the Thursday before Ash Wednesday. Every year, there are an average of 100 million paczki eaten in Poland on Fat Thursday.
The people of Poland also eat faworki on Fat Thursday. Often called angel wings, faworki is a fried pastry that has been twisted into thin ribbons and dusted with powdered sugar. For a recipe for faworki, click here and then click “Translate” in the small box at the top of the page.
Mardi Gras in Detroit is not only about eating sugary foods, there is also a 5K Paczki Run which was held by Tour de Troit on Saturday, February 18th. The Paczki Run starts at Joseph Campau, just south of Holbrook at Hanley Street, and winds through Hamtramck. Of course, once the race is finished everyone celebrates with Paczki and beer!
One more local Paczki Day tradition is a band called The Polish Muslims. They describe themselves as a “polka-rock band” and have been performing for over 40 years. They will perform at Ant Hall in Hamtramck 2320 Caniff Street in Hamtramck on Paczki Day from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Whether you stand in line to get paczki in Hamtramck or buy them from your local grocer, we hope you enjoy the day and indulge a little.
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