Join us as we take you on an adventure 700 years into the past to find out how obwarzanek are made.
After much stress of getting from Katowice to Krakow (including illegally riding a bus without paying and almost getting on a train that was going direct to Berlin), I met Kate at the train station. We were both a bit delirious after early morning starts and were ready to go and eat something. We stopped by a charming little market and decided to offset the Polish culture we were about to experience by eating some kind of falafel at a strange stall.
We scooted – slowly because of our bags we have stuffed to the gunnels in prepation for our upcoming bummel around the Tatras mountains – on to our next destination: muzeum obwarzanka.
We entered through the gift shop – other than the cooking class this seemed to be the only other part of the museum (?) and had a few minutes to eye up some truly kitsch souvenirs.
We entered into our cooking class and were thankfully given aprons proportionate to our size this time. We were immediately inducted into the history of the obwarzanek. It is much like a bagel (I think our cooking teacher was desperate for us all to simply call it a bagel because we butchered the pronunciation of obwarzanek to such a great extent) in that it is boiled and then baked.
Fortunately in this cooking class – there was not much that we could get wrong, the dough was pre-prepared for us and we simply had to roll our two balls into long thin sausages – in Polish these are known as sulki. We started first by flattening our balls into oblongs to create the most perfect dough sausages to use later and rolled away at them with the flat of our palms.
We then braided our two strands together – like a medieval princess’s golden tresses. The teacher showed us an incredibly impressive and cool way of braiding the two strands where you hold both in the air and spin one around the other. This prevents tangling and creates a neat braid.
We then turned our bagels into doughy bangles by joining the two seams in a circle. Many of the obwarzanek were hanging around the wall and had been there drying for years – apparently because they use only fresh ingredients they do not go moldy – I don’t know if I would trust ones I made at home like this!
We wrote our names onto sticks so that we could collect our obwarzanek at the end of the lesson.
Our obwarzanek were whisked away and boiled all together for ten seconds. We had the choice of poppy seeds, sesame seeds or the simple classic – salt. Kate and I both topped ours with sesame seeds.
The obwarzanek were then baked in the oven for ten minutes, which is when it happened… we were further educated on the history of the obwarzanek, specifically its medieval origins, when his name flashed onto the screen … Bolesław. Obviously Kate and I had both read it as coleslaw with a B. It was desperate – we could by no means make eye contact with each other or else.. but then I looked around and Kate looked me dead in the eyes and said ‘Boleslaw’. The rest of the history is a total blur to me because we were stifling laughter like our lives depended on it.
Despite the unfortunate introduction of certain Polish Kings, obwarzanek have a fascinating history. They were first mentioned in 1394 and there name comes from the word for boiling or immersion. The production of obwarzanki was tightly controlled by the crown and the guilds under its remit. Specifically, obwarzanki were traditionally only allowed to be made during Lent, inside the city walls of Krakow and only by certain bakeries. This all changed in 1802 when bakers drew lots – any baker had the right to make obwarzanki if it was there turn. Despite the charming nature of this bureaucracy, the tradition ended in the mid-nineteenth century and since then any baker has been allowed to bake obwarzanki.
In 2010 obwarzanki were celebrated even more when they were added to the Register of Protected Geographical Indications (PGI). When you visit Krakow (which you certainly should!) make sure you buy your obwarzanki from a glass fronted stall with the PGI logo so you know they are traditionally baked, rather than by a machine. You can spot this also by looking at the underside of the obwarzanek: if it has bumps then it is machine prepared and baked, if it has stripes then it is prepared and baked in the traditional way.
After our induction into the history of the obwarzanek and the humour of a name like Boleslaw – we collected our fresh out the oven obwarzanki and certificates, and headed on our merry way.
We immediately devoured our creations and they were very delicious – and would have even better with a side of soup!
And so we left Krakow and the obwarzanki behind and headed into the sunset – on a Flixbus – to Zakopane (insert song here).
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