Soda bread is something I usually associate with Ireland which I have very warm memories of. There are however also other types of it and one is proziaki, small breads coming from the Subcarpathia region of Poland where Gosia comes from.

Chleb na sodzie to coś, co zazwyczaj kojarzy mi się z Irlandią, z której mam bardzo miłe wspomnienia. Okazuje się jednak, że inny rodzaj takiego pieczywa to proziaki, malutkie chlebki z Podkarpacia, rodzinnych stron Gosi.

These small flat breads are very quick and easy to make. The name comes from another way to call soda bicarbonate – proza. Some words in Polish have suffix “-iak” added (“-iaki” for plural) to describe something made with the core word. For instance “guma” – “rubber” and “gumiaki” – “wellies”. This is similar.

According to the Wikipedia article they would normally get made on the steel surface of wood-fired tile oven. For obvious reasons I’m using a frying pan. I used the recipe from Dorota Smakuje blog(sources).

If you ever visit Poland and come to Sandomierz, a beautiful town near my home town, be sure to visit the main square or the small square where you can enjoy a bit sweeter (and eggless, and dairyless, as the person selling them claims) version of these beauties.

Proziaki in Sandomierz

Planning

You’ll need ingredients and a frying pan. And a cookie cutter or a glass to cut them out.

Ingredients

• 250 ml kefir/soured milk/buttermilk – some dairy liquid
• about 10-12 g salt (about 2-2.5% of flour weight)
• 1 egg
• about 1 teaspoon sugar (we added half)
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• about 500 g flour (it depends really, you might need more or less)

Preparation

1. Whisk egg together with liquid, salt, sugar and soda

2. Add flour and work it into the wet part of ingredients

3. If the dough is well mixed, but still very sticky, add more flour. The dough will be very loose, but should not stick much

4. Put your pan on medium heat. No oil is needed. Know your pan

5. Transfer the dough onto well floured work surface and make sure it’s coated in flour

   

   Cutting out proziaki

6. Flatten it with your hands till it’s about 2 cm thick

7. Cut out proziaki and put them on a pan to bake

8. Bake on one side, then on the other, till they get golden-brown

   

   Baking proziaki

9. Set aside to cool a little bit

   

   Proziaki

It’s that simple! You can eat them warm, you can let them cool down a bit. You can try it with some cream cheese and chives 🙂