Chow: Texas-Style Kolaches Appear In Bed-Stuy Bakery
Stop at a gas station in central Texas, and you’re likely to find kolache, a Czech pastry fused with Texas-style flavors like barbecued beef and chilis that the locals call "Tex-Czech."
Like everything these days, you can find them in Brooklyn, at Brooklyn Kolache Co., a rustic bakery located off a busy stretch in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Just keep an eye out for the red rooster.
Here, Autumn Stanford pulls from her Texas upbringing to create pillowy versions of these pot-bellied breads that pair perfectly with coffee drinks.
As breakfast foods go, Texas-style kolache is pretty hard to beat. This addictive portable snack is way better than your average donut, and from the same family as the pig in a blanket.
Central Texas is home to one of the country’s largest populations of Czech immigrants, and over time the kolaches were fused with down-home foods like barbecued beef, smoked sausages, cheese and every imaginable spice from fresh jalapenos to fiery hot sauces.
What’s inside a kolache is almost interchangeable, and Autumn has roughly a dozen sweet and savory flavors, from an excellent peanut butter and jam to a chorizo, egg and cheese, her play on a breakfast classic.
But the key to a great kolache, is the dough. Autumn spent a year testing recipes from top kolache bakers in Texas, and then added her own touch, making the dough a little sweeter, yeastier and springy.
The result’s one that works most of the time, especially when enveloping savory flavors like my favorite: the sausage, cheese and jalapeno kolache. The bakers remove the casing from a smoked beef kielbasa and wrap them in the dough with jalapeno rings and a slice of American cheese.
Each bit just melts with tastes of soft dough, salty meat and hits of fiery cooked jalapeno. For an added kick, dip the kolache in a little bit of sriracha sauce and down it with an iced coffee.
These are not your mother’s pigs in a blanket.
Brooklyn Kolache Co. is located at 520 DeKalb Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. For more dining recommendations, visit Chow.com.
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