In a room buzzing with machines, a thick sheet of extra-rich dough slowly rolls down a conveyor belt at the Quality Dairy Bakery in Lansing, ready to become a cult icon. The dough will be cut, pressed, molded, warmed, fried, filled and glazed to become some of the 100,000 paczkis made at the factory during a 10-day period.
For many locals, Fat Tuesday, the day before the beginning of Lent, isn’t known as Mardi Gras but as Paczki Day. The confectionery colossus (pronounced poonch-key) is a Polish tradition that has grown in popularity during the past two decades. Bill Yandian, the cakeroom manager at the Quality Dairy in Lansing, has been making paczkis for 18 years.
The bakery was expected to produce 50,000 paczkis while running for 20 hours Monday, Yandian said.
To make the mass quantity of paczkis, Yandian said the bakery makes a thicker, richer dough than the dough normally used to make jelly doughnuts by adding more eggs, sugar and butter. The dough is mixed 500 pounds at a time in giant barrel mixers.
After mixing and resting for 20 minutes, the dough is fed onto a conveyor belt, where it is cut and pressed by a mold, making the traditional dough ball.
The dough balls are then allowed to proof, or rise to about twice their original size, while traveling through a warm, moist oven. After leaving the proof box, the full-size balls of paczki dough are fed into a fryer, where they’re cooked in shortening for two minutes.
The finished paczkis are glazed and allowed to cool before being filled. Yandian said the period between Christmas and Easter is notoriously slow for bakeries, especially when people make New Year’s resolutions to lose weight or lay off sweets. His bakery makes paczkis for each Quality Dairy in the Lansing area. Yandian said the most popular of which are custard, raspberry and apple.
Pat Shockley, a member of the Federated Polish Home, 1030 W. Mount Hope Road, in Lansing, said the treat was traditionally made to get frying lard out of the house.
“During the Lenten season in the old Catholic rite, you couldn’t eat meat or animal products,” Shockley said.
“They would use the grain and lard to fry (paczkis). Then they would use preserves they had during the winter to fill them.”
The most common filling was powidla, pronounced pud-veed-wah, a type of pruned plum.
Pat Krawczynski, president of the Lansing chapter of Polish Falcons, said powidlas are becoming harder to find in the area.
Shockley said traditional paczkis should weigh at least one pound. She rolls her paczki in granulated sugar instead of powdered sugar.
Krawczynski said paczkis weigh so much because of the rich ingredients and fat used to make the treat.
“If it’s not heavy, it’s not a paczki,” she said.
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