Sour Cherry and Sally Sheep’s Cheese Danishes excerpted from Dobre Dobre: Baking from Poland and Beyond by Laurel Kratochvila. Photography by Malgosia Minta.
New York Times Best Cookbook of 2025
“In Dobre Dobre, Laurel Kratochvila leads us down the gloriously buttery, poppy seed strewn path of modern and classic Polish baking. Ms. Kratochvila, who runs a bakery in Berlin, writes meticulous recipes that deliver impressive results.”
New York Times
Discover the vast and varied Polish baking tradition, old and new, Jewish and diasporic, in this authoritative collection of 120 plus recipes from James Beard Award finalist Laurel Kratochvila.
Poland’s distinctive baking culture is a product of its rich and complicated history, from the World Wars to the rise of Communism to the cultural exchange that inevitably comes with being a country with seven neighbors and generations of migration. Step into a Polish piekarnia or bakery and you are greeted by an abundance of tiny cookies and rugelach, decorative layer cakes and cheesecakes, sweet yeast buns and danishes, and hearty rye breads and sourdough loaves.
In this repertoire expanding baking book, American born, Berlin based baker and 2023 James Beard Award finalist Laurel Kratochvila brings you more than 120 familiar and inventive treasures. These include innovative recipes of her own as well as recipes from pioneering Polish bakers, such as:
- Horseradish, Beet, and Summer Greens Bialys
- Sunflower Rye Loaf
- Plum Butter Carnival Donuts
- Rano Piekarnia’s Summer Bilberry Buns
- Chocolate and Whipped Cream Warsaw Cake
- Karpatka also known as cream and choux cake
- Soft Iced Toruń Gingerbread
- Rose and Almond Jewel Rugelach
- Twisted Krakow Bagels
- Sauerkraut and Mushroom Rolls
- And much more.
Vivid storytelling and fascinating historical details illuminate the significance behind each recipe. (more…)
