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.
Having suffered several years of bad harvests on crowded plots of land, and hard times in the old country, the Czech people, mostly farmers, grew excited hearing stories of this new land offering advantages to new settlers. They packed meager belongings for the 3-4 month long journey across the ocean, leaving behind all that was familiar, for this new place of opportunity. Arriving in the port of Galveston, they dispersed across the fertile blackland prairie of southeast Texas. Eventually establishing hundreds of communities in Burleson, Fayette, Lavaca, Kaufman, and a number of other counties, these hard-working, frugal folks brought with them their culture and traditions of cotton farming, rich, hearty foods, and polka music, sometime affectionately called “oom-pah-pah” for its distinctive rhythm. Soon tantalizing scents of meats, rich gravies, potato salads, and sourdough pastries including kolaches permeated their kitchens.
Now, some 150 years later, those same wonderful scents still waft through the kitchens of some modern-day Czechs. Preserving their heritage, there are those who still cherish their family history, farm the land, possess the old-country costume called a ‘kroj’, dance the Czech folk dance called the ‘beseda’, and prepare the old-country recipes. Festivals are held in many areas in celebration of the old traditions. September festivals include the State of Texas Kolache Bake Show in Burleson County where contestants compete for the title of Grand Champion Kolache Baker, and the Kolache Fest in Hallettsville. Along with the usual parade, polka music, arts and crafts, and domino tournaments are kolach baking contests and kolach eating contests. Even a Kruisin’ Kolache Kar Show!
I grew up eating kolache, with my two favorites being poppyseed and pineapple, and never realized that the rest of the world wasn’t enjoying them too. However, the Kolache Factory, a Houston-based bakery-cafe franchise, now shares the tasty delicacy by shipping nationwide.
Those early settlers, hot and tired from a day in the cotton fields, sitting down to a hand-hewn table laden with Czech fare baked in a wood stove, could never have imagined in their wildest dreams that the kolache they cherished would ever be offered on the Internet through online ordering.
Kolache baking is truly an art but, if you like, you can try your hand at this old-time recipe meant for novices.
Or you can learn more about the Czech people and then order online from the Kolache Factory.
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