The "end piece" of a loaf of bread in Polish

All this what Google Images shows when I type in "pastry", I would rather call "ciastko" in Polish than "ciasto".

In "ciasto francuskie", "ciasto" means "dough".

"Ciasto" in the meaning of a ready food is rather a spongy thing with not much cream. When something has equally much cream as this proper spongy thing that used to be dough before baking it, it's called "ciastko".

"Ciastko" is also a cookie, but it's a different cup of tea (in Polish: inna para kaloszy - another pair of wellington boots).

The border between "ciasto" and "ciastko" (in the non-cookie meaning) is very blurred. But, for example, wuzetka:

is usually considered to be a "ciastko" rather than "ciasto".

But karpatka: is called to be a "ciasto", although it consists of almost only cream...

Thanks very much for the explanation Kpc. That makes more sense, ciasto as dough in that context ie French dough but then again, why is there no separate word for dough? Why is it interchangeable with cake?

Ciasto as a biccie I already understand although again it seemed odd to me at first, the same word for two very different things. Many biscuits are not at all cake-like. I know the difference between herbatniki and ciasteczki but it does seem to me that there are biscuits which are in neither category, not quite substantial enough to be ciasto but not quite small and crispy enough to be herbatniki, but they have to be ruthlessly forced into one or the other!

Different languages draw different semantic lines. Instead of comparing Polish food terminology with the British Isles (and its very different cooking traditions) it probably falls more in line with German cooking traditions (with some Russian influence).

The one that always gets me is czereśnie and wiśnie which are as different as apples and pears to most Polish people (while I cannot reliably tell them apart).


I think wet dough can be 'masa' ciasto sounds drier to me (could be wrong).

Yes I do understand that. I think pastry is not really a part of traditional Polish dishes is it? The 'pie' is a very British thing. Also the way in which meat is butchered so differently in Europe is something very hard to get the head round. I really miss being able to buy a nice joint of beef on the bone for roasting.


To me they're just two different varieties of cherry, one being slightly sweeter than the other. I think the sourer one is lighter in colour. I made jam in the summer using the darker one. It didn't set very well so I used it to sweeten rhubarb crumble. I had much better success with the raspberries and the plums gave the best set. All very yummy though!

there was a specific term for a cake in Polish before and it is still regional in parts of Poland or refers to a specific type of a cake - the name is kołacz

nowadays ciasto can both mean dough and cake (perhaps even pastry as in French pastry)


sour cherries are typically dark when really ripe - sweet cherries are much more varied - they can be very light (yellow with a red blush), red, or even almost black (various varieties) - from a biological point of view sour cherries and sweet cherries are two different species - it is easy to tell appart a sour cherry and sweet cherry tree (the leaves are distinctively different - but also the size and shape of the trees is different)

The fruits are also quite easy to distinguish. Look at the point where the fruit is connected with its "tail", on which it hangs on the tree. You will see the difference. For the sour cherry it's softer and more juicy.

The sweet cherries seem to be more likely to have worms in them.

For me it's weird that there is a single word for both of them in English and German :-)

There is a proverb: "Bez pracy nie ma kołaczy" - "There is no kołaczes without work".


Masa, ciasto - both are words used for that, and both of them have also other meanings.

From my side, a weird thing in English is that it has no word for "tort". In English it's called just "cake" - completely neglecting that it's a very special kind of cake.

Also, I don't think that English has a word for "babka" (a circular cake with a hole in the middle), and I am not sure about "rolada" (although it may refer to meat stuff as well, Tatra-style smoked cheese is also called so by manufacturers when it's not a real oscypek, as it's made of cow instead of sheep milk and it's not made in Tatras).


Is it the first time when you learn a foreign language and you discover that a word in this language has more than one meaning, for each of which there are separate words in your language? :-)

It gets more funny when there are different words for the same things used in different regions of the country, but we have already had a discussion about "angielka" in this topic - which is probably the most known example of that in Polish (there is not many such cases in Polish, it's really uniform as compared with other languages, people practically don't speak dialects any more).

In America, I was told that torte is a cake made without flour (or only a minimal amount). I'm not sure if that works in the British Isles. Large amounts of food vocabulary is country specific in English- I used to like to watch Come Dine with Me (BBC version) but found much or most of the terminology to be very weird from an American perspective.

Well I only know French, German and Irish, each of which have separate words for cake, pastry and dough. For example in Irish dough is taos, pastry is taosrán you can see the connection there) and cake is cáca, biscuits are brioscai and so on.

really how horrible! in Greek caca means 's.h.i.t' as i am sure you know.

Maf in England a 'tart' would indicate a pastry base with filling and an open or semi open top.
Where I live in Wales now, what they call a 'tart' we would call a 'pie'......(ie closed top)
oh and the end of the loaf would be a 'heel' as well I think.



this is a tart

I don't know Atch - are you trying to prove something?
like your preconception that Polish cuisine has no cake tradition?

There's tart, cake, gateau.


Here, you just hear ciasto which doesn't really tell you very much. Don't even get onto pancakes, pikelets and blintzes.


On behalf of the entire Queen's realm I apologise for that awful tv show. Basically they found the most crass individuals possible and in fact dinner parties fell out of fashion because of it in the same way that clothing used to go out of fashion when people's servants started wearing it.

dont apologise Jon, it was hilarious....I used to watch re-runs back to back, I confess.....they would find the oddest people and throw them together....

Well, die Torte in German is exactly the same as tort in Polish, and this pastry typically contains also layers being typical spongy cake made of flour (in Polish called "biszkopt", no idea about the English name).


But there is many different variations of cakes, pies and other pastries, each of them having its own name in Polish. Even though the general word is "ciasto" or, sometimes, "ciastko".


In Polish you have "placek" or "naleśnik", which are, basically, a little bit different things. Placek will contain some extra stuff, like potatoes, cheese, apples, raisins directly in the dough and it's small, with the diameter of around 10 cm. Naleśnik has the size of a big plate, the filling (cheese, jam, nutella) is put onto it after it is fried and then its rolled or folded.

It's more weird in German, where they often use a French word for a pancake (although, from I know, they have also their own word - Pfannkuchen).

But be, again, careful, as "placek" can also mean a cake.

I have also heard people using "placek" as a slang word for pizza.

And, I have forgotten, one meaning which is really far from tasty... "krowi placek" means, literally, cow's sh...t.

The one with soft cheese as a filling, I love this!!


Yes this is true, but if you mention Wedding or Birthday cake, everyone knows that these are special cakes and not run of the mill ones, so " tort ", is not really necessary to explain the difference. We also have gateaux, which is more of a special type of cake.


Comes from 'roulade' which I think is a French term originally for a rolled up dish. I think Zrazy is a type of roulade? It's not a particularly common dish in England anyway.


I didn't know that, I always thought Biszkopt/y were those dried sponge fingers used in certain Polish cake recipes. In English we would just call that part of the cake 'sponge', if it consists of different layers.

Exactly the same in English, a different word. There are more categories though in English.


Again the same; there are different words.

I love the way that we can have a lively interesting conversation....but only if it's about cakes...:)
The international language of patisserie!
My favourite cake in Poland was the one that was like a roll with honey and poppy seeds.....lovely!

one of my favourites too - but Americans beware you won't pass drug test after eating poppy seed cake - it contains traces of opiates

I like that one too, though the best one I've ever had was made by an elderly lady from Latvia, a priests wife. It was sticky and dripping with honey.

My favourite Polish cake is Wuzetka, a cake with an interesting Warsaw history.

Commercial torte I love is truflowy from Sowa:

Mmmm, and dachówki migdalowe too. Not originally from Poland however a few Warsaw bakeries have done them for decades and they are delicious.

Whenever I've served them here, Polish guests tend to assume they're a foreign delicacy however in fact they are very Warsaw.

In German there is also die Rollade, but it refers to a specific type of window curtains rather than to food. To those rolled similarly as the "rolada" food :-)


But isn't it all the same? :-) Just the size is different.

If you are talking about the "biszkopty" biscuits, there are also two versions of them, one, as you have told, in the shape of fingers:

[biszkopty_1.jpg]

the other one in the shape of discs:

Those finger-like ones are more crusty.

But in Poland nobody would think of a sponge (like bath sponge or dish washing sponge) talking about this kind of product.

God give me patience. What would I be trying to prove? I just said that I found it odd that cake, pastry and dough are covered by one word. I mean dough is hardly the same thing as cake now is it? If I offered you kawa and ciasto, how would you feel if I served you a lump of dough? But I would be quite within my linguistic rights and indeed, I may say, I would be sorely tempted to do so :)) it would serve you jollly well right.

Sorry if you felt I cast aspersions on your 'cake tradition'. I know you have cakes, many cakes, I just don't like most of them very much.



But the Irish cáca is pronounced 'caw-ka' like the caw of a crow.

It's obvious you won't get raw dough, so you know you get a piece of cake.

you probably never tried good home made varieties just the bland cukiernia substitutes

Sowa and Kandulski are both top tier and produce amazingly good stuff.

I've had some excellent Polish homemade cakes too but the best cukiernias are anything but bland substitutes.

Not really! Those Biszkopty biscuits are nothing like the typical spongy cake you describe as Biszkopt, although they are made of sponge. As you said, the ones that look like fingers are crusty, and they are hard. I used them when I made makowe z galaretką. In England they are sometimes used in trifle.


Of course not if you are talking about cake :-)

Well, maybe the proportions of ingredients are different, or the baking time, but the product seems to be the same, just of different size.

Especially talking about the circular cookies, not those fingery ones. If they are reasonably fresh, they are still soft. It's different if you keep them in a cupboard for a month after buying them.

The same sort of idea however the texture is rather different and they are used in different ways.

My Solvack Baba always called it "crunka"

That used to be the case. Rye was able to grow in northerly cliems and was once cheaper than wheat. But the giant bread factories of the West based mainly on wheat have made theitr imprint on the Polish baking industry. Nowadays even the standard Polish bread (chleb zwykły) usually contains only about 15-20% rye flour.