Zapiekanka z Kurczakiem

A cook at a Plac Nowy hatch slides a split bagietka into the oven with sautéed pieczarki, grated cheese and strips of chicken breast laid across the top, and the smell of cheese browning over meat reaches the queue well before the bread does. This is the zapiekanka z kurczakiem, the version for people who want the roasted, savory edge of poultry on a snack that otherwise tastes of mushroom and melted cheese. The chicken is cut into thin strips and seasoned, usually with salt, paprika, pepper or a poultry spice blend, so every strip carries flavor of its own before the garlic sauce reaches it.

Chicken breast is lean, and the oven is unforgiving to it. Strips cut across the grain stay tender through the bake, while thick chunks or meat left sitting turn to string by the time the cheese has set. The best ones show a few dark, almost chewy edges on the meat, and those edges are where the toasted flavor sits, sharper than anything the soft mushroom and mild yellow cheese underneath can supply. Many stalls add sweetcorn beside the chicken, which gives a sweet pop between the savory bites and a reason to order the ketchup.

The mushrooms do the quiet work underneath. Cooked down in a pan until the liquid is gone, they give the base a dark, earthy floor, and the cheese seals them in. Chicken releases moisture of its own, so a bagietka carrying wet mushrooms and juicy meat has to bake until the cut face is hard. When that goes right, the crust cracks briefly under the teeth, the cheese stretches in a hot string from the first mouthful, and the cold garlic sauce meets the heat on the tongue half a second later. When it goes wrong, the crumb under the chicken turns damp and gray, and the last third of the loaf folds in the hand and drops its load onto the paper.

It is eaten standing, off a paper sleeve that takes the grease and gives the thumb something to grip. The first ten minutes are the good ones, while the crust still holds rigid and the cheese is molten enough to drag chicken strips along with each bite. Ketchup supplies sweetness and the sos czosnkowy supplies bite, and many windows keep a spicier third bottle on the sill. On a menu board the chicken version sits beside ham, kiełbasa and plain mushroom-and-cheese, usually at a higher price than the plain one.

The round market in the middle of Kraków's Plac Nowy is where the dish is most easily found. Hatches ring the building, each with an oven, a tray of bagietka halves and a row of squeeze bottles. Late in the evening the queue is long, the air smells of toasting cheese and garlic, and a chicken zapiekanka goes across the counter in the time it takes to hand over the money. Cooks along the ring vary the seasoning on the meat and the sauce on top, and regulars pick a window by those two details.

Origin and history

The zapiekanka itself is a snack of the People's Republic, a baked split baguette sold from kiosks and milk-bar hatches from the 1970s, when the plain build of mushrooms and cheese suited a country with short shelves. Chicken came later, as stalls began to stock meats and sauces that earlier supply had seldom offered. No record names who first put chicken on one or in which year.

The Plac Nowy hatches sit in the Okrąglak, a twelve-sided rotunda in Kazimierz built in 1900 as a market hall, which the town leased from 1927 to the Jewish community as a ritual poultry slaughterhouse. The zapiekanka stalls that fill it today are a later arrival, and the chicken on the sandwich owes nothing to that earlier trade.

The first printed trace of the chicken version is a menu. In December 2012, Zapiekanki z pieca u Endziora at Plac Nowy 4 was selling a chicken, sweetcorn and ketchup zapiekanka for 10 zł, twice the price of its mushroom, cheese and ketchup standard. The stall name says z pieca, from the oven, so the chicken goes in with the bread and comes out with the cheese browned over it.