Every nation has recipes to reuse old food. This one comes from the Czech region of Moravia and is and adaptation of a potato pancake recipe to use up old bread (bread pancakes?). Some people say it should be called chleboraky because of the used ingredient (chleb=bread).

Każdy naród ma swoje przepisy, wykorzystujące stare jedzenie. Ten pochodzi z czeskiego rejonu Moraw i jest przepisem na placki ziemniaczane, przerobionym aby wykorzystać stary chleb.

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I have found this recipe on a website promoting Polish food celebrity Robert Makłowicz. In his shows he travels around the world and cooked dishes characteristic in given region.

“Next I will fry some veal and add it to the Slovaks, cooked in this huge pot behind me”. Source: http://memy.pl/mem/94405/Maklowicz

This recipe is one of many ways you can reuse your old bread.  Have a look at How to use excess bread? to find other ways.

Planning

Have some old bread, can be dry. It’s a good idea to soak it in water a bit earlier, this will make the preparation much faster.

Paper towel is useful if you want to get rid of the excess fat after frying. I put it on a plate on which I take the bramboraky from my frying pan.

Ingredients

Bramboraky ingredients

I know, hardly any metric system in here – this recipe doesn’t need precise measurements. I used about 5-6 slices of bread and it worked fine. It was enough to make about 12-15 small pieces.

• 4-5 slices of wheat-rye bread
• 200 ml water (I used more and used warm water, but then I think the dough got too wet and I had to use more flour)
• 1 tsp caraway (I used ground seeds)
• pinch of marjoram
• pinch of sweet pepper powder (I used herb pepper instead)
• pinch of salt
• 1 onion, coarsely grated
• 2-3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 egg
• plain wheat flour (depending on how moist your dough will be, you will be adding it while kneading until you are happy with the texture). You can also use wholemeal flour, spelt will also work
• oil for frying

Preparation

1. Soak the bread in water and leave to get it really soft

2. Squeeze the bread pulp to remove as much water from it as possible

3. Add all ingredients except for flour and start kneading

   

   Bramboraky dough

4. Gradually add flour until it can be shaped into patties. My dough was still quite runny, but I was afraid of adding more flour so I scooped it out with a spoon and placed on some flour, and coated them so that they don’t stick. This worked pretty well

   

   Bramboraky patties

5. Shape the patties and fry them until they get golden brown

6. Place them on a paper towel to remove some oil

   

   Bramboraky

Serve hot or eat cold – both taste really nice. You know, it’s not really a flavour orgy, but it’s really tasty.