Gotcha Kolaches?
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Quite a few towns in Central Texas were settled in the 1800s by people from Czechoslovakia. They brought their language, which some of their descendants still speak, and their music. That’s how the accordion and the polka-like rhythms became an important part of Tejano (tay-HAH-no) music.
Best of all, those Czech settlers brought the recipe for the delectable breakfast pastries known as kolaches. A kolache (kuh-LAH-chee) is sort of sweet and bready, usually about 2 to 3 inches across, and squarish (because they are baked close together in a pan). They are about 3/4 of an inch tall, and there is a well in the center that is filled with fruit jam—or sometimes cream cheese.
Kolache shops also sell sausage “kolaches” that are really just kolache dough wrapped around a small link sausage and baked, looking like a large pig in a blanket.
And they make bacon kolaches that are made like a jelly roll (a thin layer of dough rolled up into a round cylinder) but with bits of crisp bacon instead of jam. I suspect that the meat kolaches are a 20th century invention, but they are good, especially the bacon ones.
There are kolache shops all over the place these days. You can’t have a business breakfast meeting in Houston without kolaches (unless you are having really great breakfast tacos and lots of fresh fruit), and they are delicious!
Caldwell has a Kolache Festival every year, and I keep meaning to go up there and try the home-baked kolaches. Somehow when I was a child, my family not being Czech, we missed out on the kolaches. They didn’t have their own festival in those days.
I want to go straight to the source and try out the real kolaches in Caldwell. I hope you get a chance to do that someday, too.
Meanwhile, if you ever see a kolache shop, stop in and try some. Yum!
