Kolache

A kolache looks like a small Danish pastry. A really good one, still oven-fresh as found on the shelves of bakeries in Czech-ancestored communities of Texas and Oklahoma, leaves ordinary Danishes in the dust. It is so exquisitely tender that a too-eager grip will compress it into a blob. Its dough is sweet but delicately so; and its filling is anything but cloying. Apricot, prune, or a paste made of poppy seeds are the traditional variations, but today’s bakers address the 21st century sweet tooth by also offering such fruitier flavors as apple, strawberry, and blueberry – as well as kolaches made with cream cheese in addition to the fruit. A savory variant of the kolache was invented early in the 1950s, when Wendell Montgomery of the Village Bakery in the town of West, Texas, decided to do something to improve sales of sausage bread. He convinced his mother-in-law to come up with a snack-sized version of the bread using the slightly sweet kolache dough and including short lengths of the sausage that local butchers make. Her inspiration was the Czech klobasniki, which is customarily filled with ground sausage. Old timers still call them that, although most are currently sold as pigs in blankets, the term kolache being reserved for those with sweet filling. Klobasnikis have become a staple of kolache bakeries throughout the state, often including cheese and jalapeno peppers along with the sausage.