Cebularz lubelski

Appearance & taste

Cebularz lubelski is round, 5 to 25 cm across and about 1.5 cm thick. The onion layer is golden yellow and tastes and smells of braised onions. Around it runs a dough rim 0.5 to 1.5 cm wide with a crisp, light golden to slightly brownish crust. The crumb is pale, soft and slightly moist and takes on the aroma of freshly fried onions from the topping. If the cake is baked on wheat bran, the bran visibly sticks to the underside.

The onion cake should be eaten within about 48 hours of baking. It may be sold unwrapped; it is only wrapped individually once it has cooled, because otherwise it becomes moister and quickly loses its crispness.

Production

For 100 kg of fine wheat flour there are 2 kg of sugar, 3 kg of margarine or butter, 4 kg of yeast, 50 l of water and 1 kg of salt. According to the specification, the dough thus contains twice as much sugar and fat as ordinary wheat dough. For the topping, 30 kg of onions are coarsely diced and mixed with 3 kg of blue poppy seeds, 1.5 kg of salt and 1 l of rapeseed or sunflower oil or a mixture of the two; the onions are not precooked. The specification stresses onions with a mild, sweet taste and keeping to the conditions and the time the onion mixture needs to mature.

The dough is divided and shaped into rounds by hand, and the onion mixture is spread evenly on top so that a crisp brown rim forms all around; then it is baked. All steps, from the onion mixture and the dough to baking, take place in the Lublin Voivodeship.

Origin & history

The area is the Lublin Voivodeship within its administrative boundaries. The name comes from “cebula”, onion. According to the specification, the region’s baking tradition goes back to the Middle Ages; the onion cake is first mentioned in the 19th century. It was first baked by the Jews of Lublin’s Old Town; before the Second World War it was the Jewish inhabitants of Lublin, Kazimierz Dolny and Zamość. Because the recipe was simple and cheap, it spread throughout the region, where the baking traditions of different cultures influenced one another. Cooking there was mostly simple, with grain, onions, rapeseed, flax and blue poppy seeds.

According to the memories of Lublin residents from the interwar period (1919 to 1939), every one of the many Jewish bakeries baked the onion cake, and street vendors sold it from baskets on their arms. The first bakery to reopen in Lublin after the Second World War was already selling it for the first Christmas after the war; after that the recipe spread quickly throughout the region. Today making Cebularz lubelski is part of bakers’ training in the voivodeship. The baked good is present at harvest festivals, the Day of Bread at the Lublin open-air museum and at fairs in Poland and abroad, and it is listed on the “Culinary Map of the Lublin Region”.