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Bakery Stall · St. Martin's Croissant

Rogal Świętomarciński

Rogal Świętomarciński — street food from Wielkopolska (Poznań), Poland
Photo: Radomil talk / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

The recipe is so strictly protected by EU law that a croissant baked outside the designated Wielkopolska area legally isn't allowed to use this name at all.

A crescent pastry of flaky, semi-puff dough wrapped around a dense filling of white poppy seed, almonds, walnuts, and dried fruit, glazed and scattered with nuts on top — bakeries across Poznań sell them by the thousands every November.

Why it's made this way: Legend traces the modern tradition to 1891, when a Poznań priest asked his parish to do something for the poor and a local confectioner revived an older St. Martin's Day custom, though newspaper ads for the pastry date back to at least 1860.
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Part of World of Street Food — 690 dishes from 118 countries. Something wrong here? Tell us in the comments below. Photo credits.