Huron Mountain Bakery prepares 16,000 paczkis for Fat Tuesday

MARQUETTE — A local bakery is preparing for one of their busiest days of the year, and it’s no simple task.

Huron Mountain Bakery in Marquette is one of the most popular spots around to get a paczki on Fat Tuesday. For one day, paczkis take the place of all regular donuts at the bakery.

“Paczkis will be the number one item that we sell, and then king cakes are the second,” said Kevin Johnston of Huron Mountain Bakery. “A paczki is a Polish donut. It’s basically a richer dough; it’s not like a regular donut. It’s richer, it has more eggs, butter, and sugar in it, and it’s overstuffed with filling.”

The process of making a batch of paczkis takes about 5 hours from start to finish. The entire staff has been at the bakery since 3:00 Monday morning, and they’ll be making paczkis until 5:00 on Tuesday morning. By the end of all that baking, they’ll have 16,000 paczkis ready for the Fat Tuesday rush.

Huron Mountain Bakery always counts on the community coming out in large numbers for these tasty treats year after year.

“Orders have been calling for the past two weeks,” said Johnston. “People just come out in droves, and they want to know what’s the earliest they can get them. So at 5:00 a.m., the doors will be packed. We’ll be sold out by tomorrow afternoon.”

After seeing increasing demand each Fat Tuesday over the last 15 years or so, Huron Mountain Bakery says they’re now making as many paczkis as they possibly can in their facility.

The staff are excited to see everyone at their Marquette and Ishpeming locations for the big day. You can find more information on the Huron Mountain Bakery website or Facebook page.