Paczki craze starts with Fat Thursday
The event that’s before the event gets going in south and southwest suburbs
Here is the skinny on Fat Thursday and Fat Tuesday: Fat Thursday has passed and profits made from Fat Tuesday may not be as heavy as in recent years.
Fat Tuesday is the celebration many people are familiar with. It’s the day before the Lenten season begins on Ash Wednesday, and some people use it for a chance to gorge on food before sacrificing during Lent. Or, some use it as a chance to gorge on food even if they don’t sacrifice.
The Polish pastry paczki has caught on in the Chicago area as a Fat Tuesday favorite, with some bakeries in the south and southwest suburbs enjoying bonanzas on what has become known as Paczki Day.
Lesser known is Fat Thursday, a Polish tradition that dates back to the 16th century, according to dayoftheyear.com. It’s believed in Poland that eating doughnuts before Lent is good luck.
That puts gorging ahead of the curve with paczkis being sold en masse in areas with a large Polish population.
Velvet Bakery in Oak Lawn and Witek’s Bakery in Palos Hills were buzzing Thursday, selling thousands of paczki five days before Fat Tuesday while Mokena’s Fleckenstein’s Bakery, a Fat Tuesday go-to place, did not sell many at all.
“It’s a very small number,” owner Robert Fleckenstein said. “I don’t even want to tell you how much.”
At Velvet Bakery, people were lined up for the 5 a.m. opening despite the cold weather, according to owner Anna Kaliszak.
“Thursday is bigger for the Polish community,” Kaliszak said. “Tuesday is the bigger day for the American customers but not the Polish, for sure.”
She said she got no sleep Wednesday night as she and two of her crews made more than 7,000 paczkis. When all is said and done next week, she guesses they will have made 45,000 in what she calls her “small bakery.”
That doesn’t include desserts made for Valentine’s Day on Sunday.
Kaliszak offers paczki with a choice of raspberry, cherry, blueberry, plum, strawberry apple, rose hip, apricot, lemon, custard, cream cheese and Nutella fillings, but Oak Lawn’s Anna Balos favors them with no filling.
“I like them empty,” she said. “I don’t like them with any flavor. Just plain. It’s already sweet.”
Balos bought a box full that also featured paczki with filling for her family. She said she enjoys the Fat Thursday tradition because she loves paczki.
“It’s a holiday where we can eat it with no regrets,” she said.
Another Oak Lawn resident, Mike Kadlub, said though he is not Polish, he is from Slovakia, he enjoys Fat Thursday.
“I used work with a lot of Polish guys and every year they had Fat Thursday, and I’ve been buying paczkis on Fat Thursday for 10 years,” he said. “I like the raspberry, the strawberry and the blueberry is fine.”
Because of COVID-19 and some of the state restrictions on how many people can be inside his bakery, Fleckenstein is not sure what the 2021 version of Fat Tuesday is going to bring.
He said he sold 25,000 paczki in his Mokena store last year, but is not sure how many he will sell or make this year. He said he has been in discussions with some of his friends in the business and they agree that this year will be unpredictable.
“It’s such a gamble,” he said. “What do we do? How many do we make? Do we stick our necks out or do we play it safe? They are mostly figuring on making 60% to 75% of what they used to make. That’s what some of them are doing. We might be doing the normal amount, I don’t know.”
He envisions more people having to stand outside because he normally can host 30 to 40 people inside, but with the COVID-19 mandates perhaps only five or six can come inside at a time. Fleckenstein offers a speedy pickup service in the back of the bakery for people who order their treats early. But the overall business is still an unknown.
“I also heard that now big storm projected for Tuesday or Wednesday. That puts another damper on it,” he said. “What do you do? As I said, it’s a big gamble. That’s why I don’t go to the boats. We gamble every day of the week.”
About the only thing guaranteed at Velvet Bakery is that the owner will not be getting much sleep.
“Between Monday and Wednesday, forget about it,” Kaliszak said. “Even my husband will be helping and he won’t get much sleep. But it’s going to be fun.”