Kołacz meaning cake, wheel cake, or coffee cake (variously transliterated as kolach, kolachky, kolacky, kolachy, from : "disk") is a traditional Polish

Polish cuisine

Polish cuisine is a style of cooking and food preparation originating from Poland. It has evolved over the centuries due to historical circumstances. Polish national cuisine shares some similarities with other Central European and Eastern European traditions as well as French and Italian...

 pastry, originally a wedding cake

Wedding cake

A wedding cake is the traditional cake served to the guests at a wedding reception after a wedding. In modern Western culture, it is usually a large cake, multi-layered or tiered, and heavily decorated with icing, usually over a layer of marzipan or fondant...

 that has made its way into American homes around the Christmas and Easter holidays. The pastry is a light and flakey dough filled with a variety of sweet and savory fillings such as apricot, raspberry, prune, sweet cheese, poppy seed

Poppy seed

Poppy seed is an oilseed obtained from the opium poppy . The tiny kidney-shaped seeds have been harvested from dried seed pods by various civilizations for thousands of years...

 or even a nut mixture. Variants of the traditional Slavic

Slavic peoples

The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...

 pastry have found entrance into many Central and Eastern European cuisines, e.g. the Czech

Czech cuisine

Czech cuisine has both influenced and been influenced by the cuisines of surrounding countries. Many of the fine cakes and pastries that are popular in Central Europe originated in the Czech lands. Czech cuisine is marked by a strong emphasis on meat dishes. Pork is quite common, and beef and...

 leven yeast dough called Kolache

Kolache

Kolache is a type of pastry that holds a dollop of fruit rimmed by a puffy pillow of supple dough. Originating as a semisweet wedding dessert from Central Europe, they have become popular in parts of the United States...

 (Koláč). When the dough and filling mixture is rolled it is also known a Poteca, makowiec, makownik, strucla z makiem (poppy seed strusel), strucla orzechowa (walnut strusel), strucla z migdalowa (almonds strusel). In Hungarian this is called, Diós-mákos Beigli or Bejgli. Some sprinkle the roll with poppy seeds or powdered sugar on top and can be baked in a circular pan or long-ways in a jelly pan like a log.

The Polish pastry is made from a special dough that combines cream cheese with butter and flour. This ingredient mixture gives it a unique flakey quality similar to a pie crust. For individual servings, the dough is rolled thin and then cut into squares. A thin line of the filling is spread along the diagonal of the square. Then two opposing corners are folded over each other to create the unique shape of the pastry. When made in a large batch or in a roll, servings are sliced off like bread.

See also

• Kalach
  Kalach (food)
  Kalach , also known in Ukrainian as kolach), is a traditional East Slavic bread used at various ritual meals. It name came from the Old Slavonic word kolo meaning "circle", "wheel"....
  
  , East Slavic bread
• Kolache
  Kolache
  Kolache is a type of pastry that holds a dollop of fruit rimmed by a puffy pillow of supple dough. Originating as a semisweet wedding dessert from Central Europe, they have become popular in parts of the United States...
  
  , Czech pastry
• Kalács
  Kalács
  Kalács is a Hungarian sweet bread very similar to brioche, usually baked in a braided form, and traditionally considered an Easter food. The word comes from the Slavic languages and refers to the original rounded form of the bread...
  
  , Hungarian sweet bread
• Beigli or Bejgli
  Bejgli
  The poppy seed roll is pastry consisting of a roll of sweet yeast bread with a dense, rich, bittersweet filling of poppy seed. An alternative filling is a paste of minced walnuts....
  
  , Hungarian pastry

External links

Encyklopedia staropolska ilustrowana by Zygmunt Gloger

Zygmunt Gloger

Zygmunt Gloger was a Polish historian, archeologist, geographer and ethnographer, bearer of Wilczekosy coat of arms.-Life:...

 Product information by the Polish Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development

Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of the Republic of Poland

Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of the Republic of Poland was formed on October 1999, from transformation of Ministry of Agriculture and Food Economy of Poland; the ministry can trace its history to 1944....