PULASKI, WI (WTAQ) — It’s Fat Tuesday, and fueling the celebration? Pączki.
That’s POONCH-key for the unfamiliar. They’re fried balls of dough stuffed with fruit jelly or any other delicious filling.
The place to get these Polish pastries? Smurawa’s Bakery in Pulaski, of course. That’s where Andrew Nowakowski stood in line starting at 5:00 am–and he wasn’t even the first in line.
“We’re Polish, and I think it’s important to celebrate our heritage,” Nowakowski told WTAQ. “What better way than to wake up early and eat delicious pastries?
That heritage is deep. Each of the over 30,000 pączkis the bakery sells comes directly from Greg Smurawa’s family recipe. It’s a tradition that’s followed his family all the way from Poland.
“It comes from the old country, where on Pączki Day, the day before Ash Wednesday, you used up all of your enriched ingredients to make pączki as one last celebration before the coming of lent,” Smurawa said Tuesday.
While pączki’s are typically filled with a fruit jelly, Smurawa’s sells them in all sorts of flavors including french cream, custard, chocolate, and poppyseed. The most popular flavors are rasperry, french cream and prune.
“If you’ve had a pączki, you’ll know right away that it’s not another jelly doughnut,” Smurawa said. “If you try one of our pączki, you’ll see there’s a huge difference between a Bismarck and a pączki.”
It’s the 20th year that Smurawa’s Bakery has observed Pączki Day.
