Caroline Carlson | Daily Press Bakery Manager Art Ziebell and bakery employee Gavin Keener cut dough for paczkis at Elmer’s County Market.

ESCANABA — Fat Tuesday, or its French translation, Mardi Gras, is a traditional day of indulgence before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. In some areas of Michigan, Fat Tuesday has affectionately been dubbed Paczki Day.

A paczki, pronounced (puhnch-kee) is a deep-fried Polish pastry made of yeast dough that is glazed, iced or stuffed with a variety of fillings. Historically, making paczkis was a way for Polish families to use up butter, sugar, eggs, fruit and lard before the fasting days of Lent.

These days, the pastries are available in some area stores for a single day each year — Fat Tuesday. Both stores begin taking paczki orders during the two- to three weeks leading up to Fat Tuesday.

Elmer’s County Market Bakery Manager Art Ziebell emphasized that paczkis are a richer, more hard-core pastry than a doughnut.

“They are not for the faint of heart,” has appropriately become Ziebell’s paczki disclaimer.

Ziebell said the idea to bring the Polish pastries to Elmer’s came from a billboard he saw in town over two-dozen years ago. His hunch that customers would be interested in paczkis was confirmed soon afterward, when Elmer’s began getting phone calls asking for them.

Still a bit unsure of demand, Ziebell began with a batch of 100 paczkis. They quickly sold out. In subsequent years, Elmer’s would exponentially increase its batches. This year, the bakery crew is making a little over 5,000 paczkis.

Despite the overwhelming annual demand, Ziebell said he’s got to put a cap on orders to maintain production of the rest of the bakery items, including sweet rolls, cakes, pies, muffins, cupcakes, danishes, doughnuts, breads and buns — especially since everything is made from scratch, including the paczkis.

Getting ingredients has not been a challenge for Elmer’s bakery, despite the pandemic. Ziebell says because the scratch bakery spends a lot of money with vendors every week, he has a variety of reliable suppliers he can call upon.

Elmer’s doesn’t stop taking orders or making paczkis until Fat Tuesday, and the effort takes the entire bakery team.

“The process requires a lot of effort. We’ve always got 180 pounds of yeast dough working,” Ziebell says, referring to the perpetual batches required to produce so many paczkis.

The bakery manager said the kind of big push it takes to fill orders for Fat Tuesday requires crew members to give 150%, but when everyone works together, it goes well.

“It’s just something fun to do,” Ziebell added.

Owner of Donut Connection in Escanaba Terri Skradski said she also saw a paczki billboard years ago and jumped into the Fat Tuesday tradition. Skradski began with a batch of about 500 paczkis. At first, she said, they weren’t that popular, but word got out and demand grew. Shradski said paczkis are especially sought after by those who’ve relocated to the area from Lower Michigan.

Skradski’s crew begins their paczki process a week in advance, using over 1,000 lb of powdered sugar to make their whipped frosting filling — which they call ‘angel’ — in vanilla and chocolate, in addition to making glaze and chocolate icing.

Donut Connection will be making almost 10,000 paczkis this year, putting a full crew to work around the clock from Monday night through Fat Tuesday. Skradski said the team includes employees who worked at the shop 20 years ago, and come back to help on this one day every year. The help is much-needed and greatly appreciated.

“Every year we get more and more orders,” she said.

Skradski also managed to get the paczki supplies she needed from vendors this year. Estimating how much to order for such an ambitious undertaking always poses a challenge, she said, without the added uncertainty around COVID-19.

Donut Connection will be taking orders and making paczkis until sales close Tuesday at 6 p.m. Like the Elmer’s bakery team, the toughest challenge Skradski’s crew will face is the long hours, including clean-up time afterward. Like Ziebell, Skradski said tackling Fat Tuesday paczki orders every year is an awesome example of working together as a team. She added seeing the happy customers makes the effort worth it.

It’s fun, but it’s crazy,” she said.