If you find yourself traveling through southeast Texas, a visit to a Czech bakery is one treat worth the detour. It may be my Czech roots talking, but I think a fresh, warm poppyseed kolach melting in your mouth is one of life’s top ten pleasures.
(Photo by jewell willett@morguefile.com)
If you live very far from southeast Texas you may not yet know what a kolach is but I’m certain that, once you indulge in the sweet, tender pastry, you’ll be hooked.
A favorite throughout the Czech Republic, kolache are the original Czech wedding pastry. The square shaped sweetbread with various fillings of apple, apricot, peach, pineapple, prune or poppyseed, as well as cottage cheese, cream cheese, and even sausage, also makes a great breakfast food, dessert, or a fingerfood at any gathering. Some of the first kolache made in Texas were baked in the woodstove ovens of Czech families after they began arriving in the new world in the mid 1800’s.
