Once a year, the staff at DeEtta’s Bakery gear up for a day of continuous frying – paczki day.
“A paczki is an extra rich donut dough. It started as a Polish tradition, right before Lent to use up all your extra eggs, butter, sugar, all that good stuff before Lent started to make an extra rich dough,” says Morgan Tyschper, owner of DeEtta’s Bakery in Naperville.
The paczki tradition began with family
Tyschper incorporated the paczki into the bakery after learning of the tradition from her husband’s family.
“When we were opening the bakery I said, ‘we need to share this with everyone.’ And then I realized Chicago has a very large Polish population, and my mother-in-law, also being Polish, taught me how to make a paczki, what goes into a paczki,” said Tyschper.
Once the paczki dough is made, it goes through the proofing process before frying for 2 minutes on each side. Then, once the dough cools, it can be filled and topped with chocolate or powdered sugar.
And customers have a choice of fillings.
“We have everything here between a custard, fresh jellies, as well as fresh whipped cream and fresh strawberries. So there’s a whole variety for all the different taste buds,” said Tyschper.
One of the key ingredients in paczki dough is eggs, and the bakery has been impacted by the increased prices.
“A little bit,” said Tyschper, “we’ve tried to keep the price down as much as we possibly can, but there has had to be just a little bit because a lot of our products, such as the custards and some of the pâte à choux they do use a lot of eggs.”
Paczkis will be offered for one day only
DeEtta’s will be offering the paczkis for one day only – the Tuesday before Lent begins.
“There’s one day here at the bakery where it’s dedicated to just paczki. We won’t have any of our other assorted bakery items. It’s just paczki, just to make that day so special. And that day truly is special. Everyone comes together and it’s all about paczki and that’s why we keep it to be just that one day,” said Tyschper.
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