National Bakery and Central Standard Partner for Pączki Day

Old fashioned-inspired paczki. Photo courtesy of Central Standard.

Milwaukee’s Polish roots are rarely more apparent than on Fat Tuesday, when thousands venture out to local bakeries in search of pączki — sugared and butter-rich doughnuts with sweet fillings meant as a final splurge before the Lenten season.

The filled pastries are a favorite at the 100-year-old National Bakery & Deli, which ranks “Pączki Day” as its single busiest of the year, according to co-owners Bryant Krauss and Jeff Callen.

“People start lining up early in the morning, and it turns into this big event for the whole day,” Callen said. “People absolutely love it and crave it. So we love playing into that, and we try to make as many as we can, of course, to feed the masses,” Krauss added.

In 2026, National Bakery is prepared with 40,000 regular pączki, custom T-shirts and accordion players at all three of its Milwaukee-area locations. The bakery will also debut a new old fashioned-inspired flavor created in partnership with Central Standard Craft Distillery.

The special pączki feature traditional butter dough and a chopped cherry filling spiked with Central Standard’s brandy old fashioned mix, finished with bitters-infused buttercream and a cherry and candied orange slice skewer.

“We’re an old bakery, but we’re always trying to come up with new and innovative ideas,” Krauss said, noting that the idea evolved from a casual conversation with his friend — and Central Standard’s chief commercial officer — Jim Kanter. “We bounced some ideas and got some feedback from them, and then we worked internally here with our bakers and our decorators on the creative and taste profile.”

Kanter was an immediate fan. “It really has a good orange flavor — that orange bitterness — and of course, this one’s patterned after the classic Wisconsin brandy old fashioned sweet. Seeing as it’s pączki, there’s certainly some sweetness to it, but it was fantastic.”

Pączki, the plural form of pączek, were created as a way to use up ingredients like lard or butter, sugar, eggs and fruit before the 40-day Lenten fast of Christian, particularly Catholic traditions. The treat was later popularized by Polish immigrants, many of whom settled on Milwaukee’s South Side, where National Bakery operates today.

“Our main location here on 16th Street is traditionally an old Polish neighborhood, so that’s how it really started,” said Krauss, who has operated the bakery with Callen for nearly 19 years. “We’re really embedded with the Polish community. Of course, we weren’t around 100 years ago when the bakery got going, but we’re certainly the center of attention for pączki today, and the tradition just kept growing from there.”

A brief history of pączki will be printed on cards for guests to grab during their Fat Tuesday visits. National Bakery has locations at 3200 S. 16th St., 5637 Broad St. in Greendale, and 13820 W. Greenfield Ave. in Brookfield.

Pączki pre-orders are now live on the bakery’s website, with available flavors including raspberry glazed, raspberry sugar, prune glaze and lemon iced. The limited-batch old fashioned pączki cannot be pre-ordered. Sales will be first come, first served on Feb. 17; the bakery opens at 6:30 a.m. that day.

At Central Standard, the pączki will pair with Mardi Gras-inspired cocktails as part of the distillery’s own Fat Tuesday event.

“We just love the fact that the people of Wisconsin continue to support us, and we love giving back fun, little unique surprises that celebrate everything that is Wisconsin and everything that is Milwaukee,” Kanter said. “So we’re just going to have a lot of fun with it.”

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