Polish Christmas Gingerbread (Piernik Staropolski)

Prepare the spices. In the photo you can see all the spices I used. The cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg were already ground into powder — those are in the second row. I ground the remaining four spices in a mortar. Standard kitchen scales aren't precise enough for amounts in the 5–10 gram range and can be off. However, I have a jewelry scale accurate to the gram, so I weighed everything on that and noted the equivalent quantities in pieces in parentheses. This matters here because, for example, weighing 1 g of black pepper on a regular kitchen scale could easily give you three times as much, which would noticeably affect the final result. Before grinding, remove the cardamom seeds from their pods and the star anise seeds from the stars. If you don't have all 8 spices I used, that's perfectly fine — just use at least the main ones: cinnamon, ginger, and 2–3 others of your choice based on what you have on hand. The gingerbread will still turn out delicious.

Here are all the ground spices.

Mix together.

Make the dough. Place the honey, sugar, and butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan.

Heat over low heat until the honey melts and the sugar dissolves. Let cool completely.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and spices; mix well — a whisk works best.

Add the cooled honey mixture, eggs, and milk; stir to combine.

Add the zest grated from one orange (the orange part only). Of course, in old Polish baking there was no orange zest because there were no oranges! But we live in the 21st century, and I can't imagine Christmas baking without that citrus aroma, so I added the zest — though of course this is optional.

Mix together. The dough at this stage may be soft and sticky — it will come together properly later. Cover with a kitchen towel and refrigerate for 2 weeks or longer.

Time to bake. Divide the dough into three equal portions. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough into a rectangle — I rolled mine to 38x26 cm. While rolling, I used a cutting board to straighten the edges so it came out as a true rectangle rather than an oval. Try to keep the rectangle as even in thickness as possible.

Bake in an oven preheated to 180°C (350°F) for 7–15 minutes.

Bake the other two layers the same way. Let cool.

Plum jam is traditionally used as the filling. It's quite a traditional, old-fashioned product that's honestly hard to find in stores these days, but I did manage to track some down. If you can't find it, you can use apple preserves, a thick berry jam, or similar. It's important that whatever you use isn't too sweet — ideally it should have a noticeable tartness. If your jam is very sweet, you can reduce the amount of sugar in the dough. I used 900 g of plum jam. Spread half of the jam over the first layer and smooth it out.

Place the second layer on top and spread the remaining jam over it.

Place the third layer on top.

Place a large cutting board on top and weigh it down with something heavy. I used 2 bottles of water, 4 liters each (8 kg total). Leave for 1–3 days so the layers press together well. I wrapped mine in plastic wrap to keep the edges from drying out.

Then trim the edges straight, and either leave it whole or cut it into thirds, as I did.

I ended up with 3 gingerbread loaves. Here's what they look like from the side.

I decorated one with ganache. Melt 100 g of chocolate and 50 g of butter together (I do this in the microwave), then pour over the gingerbread. Sprinkle with walnuts.

I decorated the rest with sugar glaze. Thoroughly mix 150 g of powdered sugar with 2–3 tablespoons of orange juice, then drizzle over the gingerbread using a piping cone. Decorate with sugar pearls.

The gingerbread keeps best at room temperature, tightly wrapped in plastic wrap or a bag. Here's what the inside looks like.

This Polish holiday gingerbread is incredibly fragrant and absolutely delicious! Put the kettle on and enjoy the holidays with homemade baked goods!