Kolaches are undoubtedly the most popular (perhaps the only known) Czech pastry in the United States. There aren’t many other typical Czech food items that Americans would be familiar with. Immigrants from former Czechoslovakia brought their recipes over and continued to make them in their new homes. There are even bakeries around the country that sell them, specifically in Texas, Nebraska and Brooklyn.
The correct name is actually not kolaches. It’s koláč (singular) or koláče (plural) but I do like how it’s been americanized. Kolaches are very popular in the Czech Republic, although people don’t make them at home as much as our grandmothers used to. You can find them in every good bakery, though, in different sizes and fillings. You can get a huge kolach with all the fillings or individual ones. Petite wedding kolaches have been traditionally served at weddings.
Czech Kolaches
There are a few variations of the yeast dough depending on what kind of kolaches do you want to make. I will start you off with the basic one that I somewhat remember from my grandmother and have made myself many times. There are three kinds of fillings: sweet cheese (tvaroh), poppyseed (mák), and plum preserves (povidla). You can make all the fillings or just choose one and make them all the same. Some of the ingredients are not what you can find at your local store. You can find them at the Czech store in Queens, NY or many Polish shops. I will suggest some alternatives that will do just great. You will need a scale and a metric measuring cup as I use my family’s recipes that are in metric units. We also use a regular soup spoon as a “tablespoon” and a coffee spoon as a “teaspoons”.
Equipment
- Kitchen scale
- Metric measuring cup
- Rolling Pin
Ingredients
- 250 ml milk
- 30 g fresh yeast , preferable or 45 g dried yeast
- 80 g sugar
- 500 g flour ,I would use half regular (“hladká”) and half semi-coarse (“polohrubá") but you can use multi-purpose flour (see Notes)
- 2 egg yolks (save the whites for egg wash)
- 100 g butter (save a piece for buttering the baking sheet unless you’re using a parchment paper or silicone mat)
- 2 tbsp oil
- 1 tbsp dark rum
- 1/4 tsp salt
Sweet cream filling:
- 500 g tvaroh (tart creamy cheese similar to Gervais, available in Polish stores, substitute with cottage cheese)
- 1 egg or yolk
- 60 g sugar
- 1 packet vanilla sugar (or just use a teaspoon of vanilla)
- 4 tbsp raisins
- 2 tbsp dark rum
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
Poppyseed filling:
- 200 g ground poppy seeds (or buy whole poppyseeds and grind them in a coffee grinder)
- 250 ml milk
- 60 g sugar
- 1 packet vanilla sugar (or 1 tsp vanilla)
- 2 tbsp dark rum
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp lemon juice
Plum filling:
- 1 jar plum preserves
- 2 tbsp Slivovitz (Czech plum vodka) or dark rum
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 tsp lemon juice
Crumb topping:
- 120 g flour ,coarse flour ("hrubá) or farina works best
- 60 g sugar
- 80 g butter , softened
Instructions
- Sift the flour into a large bowl (my grandma would always use this white, metal, enameled bowl). Make a well, crumble the yeast in it, add about 100 ml lukewarm milk and a tablespoon of sugar. Let the yeast grow for about 15 minutes. Make sure the milk is neither cold nor hot. Cold milk prevents the yeast from growing and hot milk kills the yeast. Alternatively, you can make the starter in a separate bowl by mixing the milk, yeast, sugar and a bit of flour and add it to the flour later with the rest of the ingredients. I like to make it all in one bowl.
- Once the yeast is bubbly, add the rest of the milk mixed with the yolks, melted butter, oil, rum, and salt. Mix with a wooden spoon into smooth dough. Leave the spoon in the bowl, sprinkle dough with a little flour, cover with a clean kitchen towel and let rise for 30 minutes in a warm place.
- Prepare your fillings according to the instructions bellow.
- Knead the dough a few times to get some air in. Let it rise for another 30 minutes. It should double in size and become soft. When you touch it, it should spring back.
- You can use two different techniques to shape your kolache. Shape little balls from the dough and place them on a greased cookie sheet. Then make a hole in each ball with a glass covered with a kitchen towel and dipped in flour. I prefer using a rolling pin. Flour the surface and the rolling pin. Roll the dough into a 1-inch thick sheet. With a glass or cookie cutter, cut out rounds and place them on a greased cookie sheet.
- Fill each kolach with different fillings. You can even layer two fillings, or put a dollop of each filling in every kolach.
- I decorate them by putting a sliced almond on the poppy filling, a raisin on the cheese filling and a crumble topping on the plum filling.
- Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°Celsius). The kolache will be raising some more while the oven is heating up. Right before putting them in, brush them with the egg wash from leftover egg whites. Put them in the oven and make sure you lower the oven temperature to 350°F (180°C) after the first 5 minutes of baking to ensure even baking.
- Bake for about 15-25 minutes until golden brown on the edges. Let them cool on a wire rack.
- Sweet cheese filling:
- Soak the raisins in rum. Mix all the other ingredients together. If you’re using cottage cheese, you might want to puree it in a food processor to get the smooth consistency. Add the raisins with rum.
- Poppyseed filling: Mix the poppyseeds with the milk in a small pot and cook while stirring constantly until it thickens, about 2 minutes. Add all the other ingredients.
- Plum filling: Mix all the ingredients.
- Crumb: Mix the flour, sugar and butter with your hands until it becomes a crumb.
Notes
- You can find many of the authentic Czech ingredients at the Slovak-Czech Varieties store in Long Island City, NY. They also deliver but I think it’s worth going there and seeing for yourself what they have. If you’re like me you will enjoy discovering goodies you’ve never had before.
- The store sometimes carries a poppyseed grinder but you can buy ground poppyseeds there.
- For this recipe, you can buy the flours, ground poppyseeds, and plum “lekvar” at the store.