February 21, 2002

Plains Folk: Kolaches

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

Come this summer again I'll have the honor and pleasure of leading, for the National Endowment for the Humanities, a summer seminar for teachers, "The Great Plains from Texas to Saskatchewan." We'll be reading the classic authors of the land--Webb, Cather, Stegner, Momaday--and no doubt engaging in profound argument on the burning literary issues of the day. Kolaches, for instance.

That's right, the Bohemian pastries, kolaches. If you want to experience, through literature, the contentment of plain pleasures, then read Willa Cather's short story, "Neighbor Rosicky." Rosicky comes home from the doctor, having been told he hasn't long to live on account of his heart, to find his Mary taking a pan of apricot kolaches from the oven. Giving her nothing back but joshing for her anxious inquiries, "Rosicky took one of the little rolls in his broad brown fingers." A man with proper priorities.

And then Cather gives us this delicious detail: "The thickened nail of his right thumb told the story of his past."

If you grew up in a part of the plains settled by Czechs, then you know what I'm talking about. If not, you can check out a nifty book by Roger and Linda Welsch, "Cather's Kitchens." Roger is another guy who isn't shy around the dinner table, and Linda is Czech. They trace the literary references to kolaches ("If security could ever have a smell, it would be the fragrance of a warm kolache," Cather once wrote) and also provide some recipes.

Brief definition: a kolache is a bun of yeast dough with a depression or pocket for filling, generally with a fruit jam.

For me, it's just as easy to drive down the road to Lidgerwood, N.D. and see Darlene Illies at the buff-brick Lidgerwood City Bakery. Lidgerwood is an old Czech town, as the ZCBJ Hall (once home to a Czech fraternal society) up the street testifies.

Darlene is of German farmer stock, so where does she get her kolache expertise? The original kolache-maker in this bakery was Jen Trinka. She sold out to a master baker named Dan Mogren, first instructing him how to make the favorite pastry in the distinctive fold-over style of the locality. Darlene eventually bought the business five years ago from Mogren, who taught her the arts of kolache.

"It's a knack how to get 'em cut so that they come out looking half-way decent," Darlene says. They should be small, but still hold lots of filling. She mixes yeast dough, adding a little food coloring to make the product golden, and sets it aside until she's ready for it. Then she lets it rise in a proof box, with heated water in the bottom. The dough is run through a cheater (power roller) to achieve the right thickness, then cut into squares with a device like a five-armed pizza cutter. Fillings are apricot, poppy seed, cherry, or prune: "That's basically what goes in this town," the baker explains.

The poppy seed, my favorite, is the most work. Darlene buys 100-pound bags of seed, which she mixes in 5-gallon batches as needed. The filling is a matter of poppy seeds and the left-over glazed rolls ground together and then mixed with brown sugar, powdered sugar, syrup, and salt. Darlene advises, "Add your poppy seed until it's really black."

This whole operation is pretty labor-intensive. Darlene comes in at 9 every night and bakes through the night, staying until she turns the store over to help at 8 in the morning. She leaves the shelves full of rolls, doughnuts, cookies, coffeecakes, and variety breads (oatmeal, light rye, sunflower, cracked wheat, wheat, onion, pumpernickel, cinnamon). Customers stream in like honeybees, many of them just ordering "the usual."

These kolaches are so darned pretty, you have to admire them. Briefly.

Web browsers, visit the Lidgerwood City Bakery here: www.plainsfolk.com/gravel.htm 

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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2941, tom@plainsfolk.com 
Editor: Tom Jirik, (701) 231-9629, tjirik@ndsuext.nodak.edu 

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