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TRADITION
ANDRZEJ AND HIS PACZKI
A well-worn bakery in Passaic
begins its second generation.
BY JULIA TURSHEN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDRE BARANOWSKI
A ndrzej Kaczmarek has been sleeping in lately. He used to arrive for work at 1 a.m. every morning at Polonia, the Polish bakery in Passaic that his father, Jan, opened in 1953. But last year Jan retired and Andrzej became the boss— which means that these days his new schedule allows him to walk into the bakery at the leisurely hour of 5 a.m.
Born in 1928 near Widawy, Poland, Jan Kaczmarek worked on commercial ships, often assisting in the kitchen, after a stint in the Polish navy. Upon immigrating to the United States, he employed the skills he had learned in the ships’ kitchens and worked in many different bakeries. He opened the Polonia Bakery on Monroe Street and raised his family there, including his four sons. When Jan retired, he handed the bakery off to Andrzej, who has worked there full-time since 1975.
Andrzej’s devotion to the family business hasn’t always been so steadfast. “When I was a kid, my school was down the street [from Polonia], but our home was an hour-and-ten-minute walk away,” Andrzej explains. “After school, I could either come work and get a ride home, or walk home. Often I took the walk!”
Joking aside, he speaks fondly of the business his father built and smiles widely when he shows me a frame holding two photos— one of a wedding cake, one of a 50th anniversary cake, both made by his father for the same couple. “How many people get to make someone’s wedding cake and their 50th wedding anniversary cake too?” he asks. It’s evident that Polonia has informed not just Andrzej’s life, but the local community’s as well.
The bakery feels worn in. Andrzej’s heavy, dark shoes are covered in a thin layer of sugar and flour. A large wooden table anchors the work space and big mixers line the back. Old, yellowed pieces of paper with ratios for different types of dough are taped above the mixers, and I suspect they’ve been there for a while. Sacks of flour and huge bricks of butter sit ready to be turned into Polonia’s famous babka, poppy seed cake, rye bread (including an especially delicious dense variety that begs to be toasted and spread thickly with butter or topped with smoked fish or meat), and especially its paczki (pronounced “punchkey”), or Polish donuts, which the bakery is best known for.
In fact, Polonia usually sells an impressive 1,500 to 2,000 donuts every week, but on Fat Thursday, the last Thursday before Lent (also known as “Paczki Day”), the bakery sells 10,000 donuts. That’s 10,000 in one day! When I asked Andzej how he could possibly sell so many, he said that they simply keep the fryer going all day.
Andrzej seems to have a shyness about him, but when I ask him to show me how to make the bakery’s famous donuts, he moves with confidence. Activity suits him. “Most paczki are lead sinkers; ours are light,” he says as he points to the ingredients for the dough—flour, sugar, egg yolks and heavy cream. After the dough is left to rise, Andrzej uses a large, metal stamp cutter to cut it into even pieces (“This machine is as old as I can remember,” he says as he swiftly swings the arm down). Each donut is filled with a prune paste known as lekvar, left to rise overnight and then fried in hot vegetable shortening. “Intuition,” Andrzej says when asked how he knows what the temperature of the shortening should be, how long the donuts take to fry. There are no thermometers or timers in sight. He’s training a new girl on the fryer and hands her two long, thin sticks, almost like a large set of chopsticks, to flip each donut. It looks like she’s standing before a set of drums.
The warm donuts are dipped into a glaze made of powdered sugar, orange zest and rum. Andrzej hands me a hot paczki fresh from the fryer, wrapped in waxed paper. It’s so light—the texture is almost like brioche. It’s crispy, not too sweet and there’s the acidic bite of prune and orange zest. Simple, traditional, elegant. It’s small enough that you want another. Really, it’s quite perfect.
I suggest to Andrzej that he sell only the paczki. They’re that good. It seems he’s been thinking along the same lines. “The world has changed,” Andrzej says. “People don’t go to bakeries like they used to. These days you find cakes everywhere.” Passaic’s Polish community is dwindling, too.
As for the future of Polonia, Andrzej has been considering starting a Web business and shipping Polonia’s products, expanding where and how to sell the same things he and his father have been making for over 50 years. Speaking of generations, I ask him about his daughter. Would he ever want her to work here and take over the business the way he has?
“Oh no,” Andrzej says. “I would not want her to work this hard.” I laugh and reach for a second paczki.
POLONIA BAKERY
204 Monroe Street, Passaic
973.471.3485
When Jan Kaczmarek, who opened Polonia Bakery in 1953,
retired last year, his son Andrzej (far right) took over the
business. Paczki continue to be a specialty.
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