Pastry Week Installation #2: Onion Bialy

Along Came Bialy...

For most Americans, the word bialy conjures up images of good ol' Max Bialystock from Mel Brooks' Producers, and soon the tunes of Springtime for Hitler are running through your head. The name Bialystock is actually derivative of a Polish town, Białystok, the home of the bialy, a traditional baked good of Polish Ashkenazi Jews.

The bialy is a yeasty roll similar to a bagel, though it's not boiled, and thus maintains its dinner roll texture versus the dense, chewy insides of an outwardly crispy bagel. Our bialies (from Macrina Bakery) look like giant, fancy Goldfish crackers. The dough is twisted to create the perfect carriage for sweet pieces of onion, and the whole thing is sprinkled with poppy seeds and sea salt.

As soon as you sink your teeth into that savory ring of soft bread, you realize this is no child's cracker snack. The sweetness of the generous portion of sauteed onions combines with the nutty poppyseed goodness and is married together by the crunch of sea salt. It's a scrumptious taste of the Old World, right here in Seattle, and it is a welcome bite of savoury goodness in a pastrycase that's sugared to the max.

Wash it down with a hot cup of drip, and it's a hearty start to even the roughest of days. And, as with all of our delicious new pastries, it's half price when you come in this week and buy a coffee before 10.