105 years ago, Anthony Niesluchowski of Poland, my great-great-grandfather, settled in Jackson, Michigan. There, he would establish a family tradition brought over from his home country. The Paczki, a traditional polish cuisine is similar to many Fat Tuesday treats. Initially, this calorie bomb was designed as a way to use up spare sugar and lard in a house before Lent would start. Here in Jackson, Michigan, this food has become an example of how family traditions can help bind communities.
My Grandpa, who is co-owner along with his other siblings works tirelessly. They starting earlier in the week to make the first few batches but Monday night is when the madness happens. On an average year, we make roughly 10,000 paczkis. Occasionally, my brother or dad will drive up with me to work but this year I trekked it alone. On Monday night, after Amtrak had already canceled my train to Jackson, I started driving at 8:15 and made it there before midnight. Granted I might have taken some liberty with the speed limit, but that led to more time for some family bonding. It was a long drive, the end result of seeing countless faces line up in the bitter winter for a dessert you would think is covered in diamonds. The exclusivity of our paczki is driven by the lack of hot, fresh ones in town. Large chain stores have them stored out for days and become dry. As my grandpa would say, “You leave any paczki out for 2 days, they’ll be hard. But if you put ours in a bag, they’ll be new for a week”.
The process starts with mixing the flour, butter, yeast and a few secret ingredients. After the dough rises, my uncle, John cuts the dough up and rolls them into little balls. Nolan, my cousin puts them on the racks for the fryers. Both fryers make the dough into this round, soft pastry. Once they've dried on a tray, they get filled and sent to me. The last three years I’ve grabbed my apron and started dusting them with powdered sugar. An old oak table, which is the least ergonomically friendly item in the world, gets scraped and covered in sugar over and over again in a hypnotizing rhythm. Finally, after each rack is dusted, it gets put into an order box for the working men and women of Jackson. We do this for hours and hours until the last batch gets put on the rack. Finally, a silence falls the back room of the bakery. Everyone takes a breather before the cleaning starts and slowly one by one we all file out and say our goodbyes. This is normally the only time I can see most of my cousins, so its always “until next year”.
At 105 years old, the issue is when does “until next year” go extinct? The sobering fact as the realization of age both in the bakery and between brothers gives way to the possibility of closing doors. A place that established my family in American and provided a common tale within the fabric of the community. This 6 degrees of separation extended to girlfriends of best friends to teammates whose parents lived in Jackson as children. The European Bakery has survived as the heart of a dying neighborhood and the stories will live on long after.
