I was looking through some old Gourmet magazines and was jolted into the past by a feature article entitled, "Czech, Please". I am of German, Czech and Mutt ancestry and was raised in a predominately German, Czech community. So, seeing this article about the Czech pastry, the kolache (Czech spelling is kolace), brought back all kinds of wonderful memories. My home town is small even by small standards (now about 950 people) and when I was growing up (late 50's and 60's) and all throughout school, I only had 30 in my whole class. There were three of us that lived "in town". The rest lived on working farms. Now a days schools get their food stuffs from the government so kids today eat mass produced calorie packers. We got calorie packers ,too. But, oh my goodness did we have terrific food. The local ladies cooked the food and we had fried chicken, beef stew (our town's favorite dish for Easter picnics and church picnics), meatloaf and then there were the desserts. Mouth watering lemon meringue pies, apple pies, chocolate pies, cakes yeah high and all manners of homemade cookies and of course, the pride of the local community, the kolache. Real calorie packers but guess what we did after lunch? We had PE or recess and ran and ran and played. Many games you can't do today because little Johnny might not get picked and we certainly don't want to hurt little Johnny's feelings. I digress. Back to the kolache. My favorite then and still remains as my favorite is the poppy seed. As the authors of the Gourmet article gush, a kolache is a "little square pastry that holds a dollop of fruit rimmed by a puffy pillow of supple dough". I don' think the ladies of my home town would quite put it that way, but they knew they were making something special. This article lists three places to order authentic Czech kolaches. They are:
The Kolache Factory,
Austin, Tx
kolachefactory.com
(512/467-2253
This is a chain so I don't know about the quality. But, I can attest to the next two having eaten at both.
The Village Bakery
West, Texas
(254/826-5151)
I remember my sister and I driving home from a Dallas Cowboys football game (I think we were terribly hung over, if I remember correctly) and we decided we just had to have some kolaches. Maybe that's a new hangover cure that needs to be tested.
Weikel's Store and Bakery
La Grange, Tx
weikels.com
(979/968-9413
La Grange is the town that is infamous or famous, whichever you prefer, for the play and movie, The Best Little Whore House in Texas. Ah, Miss Mona's. I forget the name of the governor at the time, but his wife got a bee in her bonnet about this den of sin and got it closed down.
If you order, try the apricot, prune, or poppy seed plus try the delightful little pigs in the blanket with the wonderful dough surrounding a cute little sausage. Lahodny! Delicious!
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