At Zingerman’s Bakehouse we’re bringing traditional Hungarian foods to Ann Arbor. Hungary has an incredibly rich and varied food tradition reaching back at least 1500 years, including an Eastern European Jewish influence. After doing the research we got excited about learning these new foods and sharing them with you. So we traveled to Hungary in September 2011, May 2012 and again in October 2012 to eat and research. And we’re going back this coming October!

Stop in and ask for a taste of our favorite Hungarian foods.

7 Reasons:

1. It Tastes Delicious
We fell in love with it first hand on our trips to Hungary. The proof is in the eating! Gulyás, cabbage goose fat strudel, lesco, pickles of all sorts, körözött, foie gras, lángos, krémes, dobos torta…delicious!

2. Practice Makes Perfect- Hungarian cuisine is more than 1000 years old!
It has incredible depth and richness starting with the Magyars themselves, the inventors of gulyás. It includes flavors and methods from Ottomans, French, Italians, and Austrians! Any food tradition that’s persisted and evolved for 1,000 years is worth knowing about.

3. We’re Connecting with Our Hungarian Customers
Food can be an incredibly positive community builder. Many of our guests are now telling us about their Hungarian ancestry and bringing family members and friends to our shop (or to learn in our BAKE! classes) so that they can enjoy a taste of home. We love making food, but it is even more meaningful when it brings so much joy, appreciation and connection.

4. It Connects Us with Zingerman’s Jewish Roots
Studying Hungarian food has helped us learn even more about Ashkenazi Jewish cooking. Many Jewish dishes are fully integrated and regularly served in the daily Hungarian repertoire and the largest Jewish community in Eastern Europe is thriving (and cooking) in Budapest today.

5. It’s Abundant and Full of Variety
There is a seemingly endless number of great pastries, cakes, breads and soups for us to explore. It will take us years to really learn this cuisine and fully share it with you.

6. We Enjoy Educating
We’re very excited to introduce Hungarian foods to a new audience. Many of us know nothing about Hungary, let alone its cuisine.

7. Hungarian Words are Fun
We delight in learning to say and spell them. Rétes! Krémes! Rigó Jancsi! Stop in and ask for help with the pronunciations and a taste of delicious Hungarian foods!

See you soon!

While very few people in Ann Arbor will have heard of flodni, in Budapest their acclaim probably couldn’t be much bigger. During our visit to Hungary’s capital city last year, I’d have to say that flodni were one of my favorites of all the great foods we ate. They’re also one of the best known of the city’s traditional Jewish pastries, which probably accounts to some degree for their popularity. Before the Holocaust, nearly a quarter of Budapest’s population was Jewish. And, it’s safe to say that a whole lot of folks of all religions were eating and enjoying flodni in integrated, international Budapest for many years before the war. Many Hungarians, both Jewish and Christian, have commented on how excited they are to see them as one of our regular offerings. We’ve even had a couple of folks who have teared-up at just the sight of the flodni. The memories of a grandmothers’ baking can make
a big mark on someone’s soul.

For the inexperienced, flodni consist of an inch of ground poppy seeds, layered with chopped apples, honey, and toasted walnuts between two sheets of lightly sweetened, slightly crumbly, all-butter pastry. I think they’re perfect for an afternoon cup of coffee or tea. If you’re looking for a great new sweet with a superb story to go with it, ask for a taste next time you stop in!

I wrote about these incredible little cookies in the last newsletter, but they’re so good that I’m bringing them back. Each time I taste them I like them even better than the last. Slightly crumbly, buttery, melt-in-your-mouth almond cookies, they’re the kind of cookie I could eat almost every day!

I sent a box to my friend Alex Carbone out in California. Her response was so poetic that I have to share it: “When I opened the package I had a Proustian moment,” she wrote, “wherein for a second I remembered the smell of the Polish cookies my Aunt Helen used to make at Christmas. I drink a lot of tea and sometimes coffee, and I like to just have a little something, not a big guilt inducing something, but just a tasteful, ladylike cookie, and these were so dainty and so crumbly and so not too-sweet. They were a lot like the Spanish Torta de Santiago, which is one of my favorite desserts, but in a crumbly cookie form. And I liked the hit of salt at the end. Yum! The other folks I served them to also loved them, including a guy whose wife is Hungarian. He was wondering where to get them because they tasted just like stuff he’s had in Hungary. A smashing success all around.” I agree completely with Ms. Carbone. The kifli truly are terrific. Ask for a taste next time you’re in the Zingerman’s Bakehouse.

See a complete list of Hungarian treats here.