Paczki Day arrives in Pulaski

PULASKI - Tuesday is Paczki Day, the fattest of all fat Tuesdays and a day, like St. Patrick’s Day, when even Irish wish they were Polish.

That’s why Smurawa’s Country Bakery, the prime purveyors of Polish pastries in Pulaski, has geared up, doubling its workforce, tripling its inventory and quadrupling its good humor, enthusiasm and all-around Polish-ness.

With Lent about to begin, there are paczki to be made. And sold. And eaten. Smurawa’s sold about 20,000 paczki last year, to both walk-in and mail-order customers, and fully expects to do so again this year.

For the uninitiated, paczki — pronounced “POONCH-key” — means “little packages,” that is, little packages of sugar-coated, jelly-filled splendor. Sure, you might call them “just a jelly doughnut,” but you might also call a Maserati “just a set of wheels” or Handel’s Messiah “just a little song.” Paczki, by most Polish-American estimations, are the crème de la jelly, the pinnacle of jelliciousness. Compared to paczki, a Bismarck is just a sunken ship.

“Around here, we say it’s not just another jelly doughnut, and we take that seriously,” says Greg Smurawa, the high priest of paczki in Pulaski. “You taste it, you feel it. It’s not a Bismarck. You’ll notice when you bite it, it has more filling, it’s richer from the additional butter and egg in the dough, it has fruitier filling.

“A Bismarck is delicious in its own right any other time of the year, but especially on Paczki Day, paczki is king.”

Smurawa says he’s searched several diet plans and has never seen paczki listed, so he concludes with perfect Polish logic that paczki have zero calories.

In the Polish tradition, Paczki Day is the day before Lent, when households would make a bunch of paczki to clean out their butter, sugar and fruits prior to the six weeks of fasting that traditionally precedes Easter.

For the record, “paczki” already is plural so they need no “S.” One is called a “paczkek” (POONCH-ek), but no one ever eats just one anyway, so the word is little used.

“We’ll go through 500 pounds of sugar, I’d say 300, 350 pounds of eggs, butter, about 250 pounds” for Paczki Day, Smurawa says.

Smurawa’s makes and sells paczki year-round, but sales fly off the charts for this particular celebration. The 18-year-old bakery really does gear up for it, borrowing fryers and other equipment and hiring extra staff. The bakery will open its doors around 5 a.m. Tuesday, and if previous years are any indication, it’ll be a madhouse, with long lines and with staff members rushing around to fill orders as quickly as possible. As in previous years, Pulaski Village Judge Robert Betley will be on hand with his accordion to keep the lines of customers amused. As always, customers will be invited to play Smurawa’s antique accordion in exchange for a free paczkek and a cup of coffee, and there could be other musicians sitting in with their own accordions.

As always, Smurawa’s will have all the traditional paczki, the apple, the prune, the raspberry, coated in granulated sugar. It’ll also offer its usual assortment of popular non-traditional flavors, too, like French crème, custard and triple chocolate. In keeping with its tradition of offering something new every year, it will have a cranberry paczka this year, too.

With paczki, coffee and live music all day, people can make a day of it, Smurawa says.

“You’re never late for work when you’re bringing paczki in for Paczki Day.”

psrubas@pressgazettemedia.com and follow him on Twitter @PGpaulsrubas