If you’re from Texas, you’re guaranteed to have tried kolache - a savory sausage wrapped in a roll of sweet dough. However, that name is misleading. A kolač (pronounced kolach) is actually a sweet pastry made of puffy dough with a fruit filling. Originally brought to the United States by Moravian immigrants, it’s now a widespread dessert and snack. The Americanized version of the word, kolache, is already in the plural form, meaning that saying “kolaches” is actually redundant.
Czech Kolače
Kolač Bread
In other Slavic countries, kolach has a number of meanings. From Russia to the Balkans, a variation of the word is commonly used to refer to a special type of bread served during religious celebrations such as Christmas and Easter. In some languages, the word is also used for any kind of sweet pastry. What ties all of them together is their common root: kolo, the proto-Slavic word for “circle.”
In contrast with the circular pastries of the European Slavs, the savory finger food we know and love today actually originated in a small Czech American bakery in West, Texas. The Village Bakery is credited with combining the klobasá, a kind of smoked sausage, with the sweet dough of the Czech kolač, thus creating klobásníky: a dish that would soon explode in popularity. Commonly referred to as “kolaches,” klobásníky have become a staple of both Texan and Czech-American cuisine, and are served in both local and chain restaurants all across the United States.
Written by Pavle Bajić