Crazy Bread

The Czechs and the Slovaks have always interested me and I know that has a lot to do with my last name, which is Tajc. In fact just having a four letter last name that is so impossible for so many people to pronounce has made me feel more than unique than all the other thousands of people with European relatives. I also feel like I am more out of touch with my Czech roots than say my Italian or German roots so I figured cooking something so uniquely Czechoslovakian would allow me to embrace them a little better.

Czechoslovakia officially became the Czech Republic and Slovakia January of 1993, the split being pretty neutral on both sides. Therefore the cuisine is pretty identical for both countries and only varies slightly from region to region. Due to limited trade in exports and imports, a lot of Slovakian food relies heavily on what is available and what could withstand hot summers and cold winters. Staples include wheat, potatoes, some milk products, sauerkraut, onions and pork. Spices were harder to come by and instead fats and lards used during the cooking process to add flavor. Like most Europeans, lunch is the main meal here and often the "hot" meal of the day. I encountered this similar eating habit when in Germany.

Breads and other wheat products are heavily depended upon, even now with increased importing of other foods, so I decided to make a very popular street pastry known as trdelnik. This pastry is wrapped around a wooden or metal pole and cooked on an open flame. Now if I were any self respecting Czech or Slovak I would own a trdlo, which is the name of the “stick” used to make this popular pastry and the reason why it is often called a trdlo. I even asked dad if he has some sort of clean metal pipe to use, no luck there. I thought about using a very large test tube, but seeing as I got it from the stockroom, not the wisest of ideas since I have no idea what it was used for. So like all good bakers, I decided to just wing it. I also had to go the non-traditional route and find a recipe that could be baked in an oven since my dorm doesn't exactly embrace "open flames" or fire pits in the courtyard. Still, this was such a traditional and praised Czech and Slovak bread, I really wanted to try it.

Now the name trdlo comes from the term crazy, and crazy was just about how I felt attempting this recipe. I felt crazy trying to roll out the dough which is quite stiff and I felt crazy coiling my dough around air, I even felt crazy trying to get it to stand upright. In the end, the crazy won and man did my final product look crazy! Now I’ve included a photo of what the pastry “should” look like and then I’ve included my own version. What can I say? My Czech roots did not help me out on this one at all. Despite the difficulties, I did like the pastry overall and had it for breakfast a couple times this week. It’s not very sweet, more like bread, but the dough is pretty dense. Of course that is most likely my doing since I think it’s supposed to be much thinner, but due to technical difficulties, well you can probably imagine judging by my photo what kind of troubles I ran into. Weirdly shaped or not, it’s still good and someday I will have to find a suitable replacement for a trdlo so maybe I could make this right.

What it should look like...

Then there is my version... okay so it's not quite the same....