When Mardi Gras rolls around each year, people have their choices of how to fatten up on Fat Tuesday.

Mardi Gras has many names, depending how you celebrate it, and at Heinz Bakery, 42 W. Main St., Westminster, it's known as Fasnacht Day.

Fasnacht is a German and Pennsylvania Dutch tradition, translating to "fast evening." It marks the final day before Lent, and is celebrated by the consumption of special deep fried dough treats called, appropriately enough, fasnacht.

Celebrating fasnachtis important to the bakery. After all, once Lent begins and people begin making some sort of sacrifice, bakery business drops off, said founder Heinz Hubert Luesse, who goes by Heinz Sr.

"The snow drops it off, too," he joked.

"It's a day that everybody buys an extra box of doughnuts and takes them to work," added his son, Heinz Eric Luesse, who is called Heinz Jr. at the shop.

How is a fasnacht different from a doughnut? Well, that varies by region.

"Everybody will tell you some secret about the fasnacht and what it should be," Heinz Jr. said.

At Heinz, the family uses a sweet dough that's also used in raisin buns. The fasnacht also requires a yeast-raised dough, Heinz Jr. said. Pennsylvania Dutch versions use potato flour to save money, he said.

Other Pennsylvania Dutch recipes also call for the delicacies to be powdered with table sugar or confectioner's sugar. In some parts of Western Maryland, the pastries are called kinkling.

"When I first started out in '72, people hardly talked about fasnacht," Heinz Sr. said. "It was not popular."

But customers who came into the shop from outside Carroll County were thrilled.

"Oh! Just like in Baltimore!" Heinz Sr. recalled one customer exclaiming during an early Fasnacht Day.

Just like in Germany is more like it.

When Heinz Sr. lived outside of Cologne, Germany, the carnival celebration would start on what was then Armistice Day — now known in most places as Veterans Day — at 11:11 a.m. on Nov. 11. It was the only time the doughnuts were fried in a bakery there, he said.

In a way, every day is Fasnacht Day at Heinz Bakery. They make the a popular items all the time now, Heinz Jr. said, noting that all are made from scratch — handmade. By 10 a.m. on a recent Tuesday, the bakery sold its last one of the day.

Still, Fasnacht Day is special, and will always be memorable for the family.

"My boy (Lance) was born five years ago on Fasnacht Day," Heinz Jr. said.

As the annual celebration looms this Tuesday, Feb. 16, the preparation begins overnight.

"If the weather is right, we'll start baking 12 o'clock at night," Heinz Sr. said. "We knock out about 200 dozen."

---

user comments (0)