By Dan Murphy

When he couldn’t find what he deemed proper paczki in Boston, Matthew Wozny took matters into his own hands and launched Beacon Hill Bakery, a self-described ‘micro-bakery,’ out of his home on Blossom Street in the West End. This decision, he said,  was made not only to fulfill his own personal craving for the donut-like pastry, which is a staple of Polish cuisine, but also to introduce this largely unfamiliar fare to local diners.

Wozny, a graduate of both Harvard University and Harvard Business School who has now lived in the Boston area ‘on-and-off’ since 2010,  was raised in the Polish American enclave of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. His mother hails from Lublin, a city in Poland, and growing up, Wozny ate a paczki nearly every morning at Jaslowiczanka Bakery – a Polish pastry shop and erstwhile Brooklyn institution that closed amid the pandemic after 50 years in business.

As he was still reeling from the loss of this beloved business, Wozny (who in 2014 also trained as a chef in the pastry kitchen at El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Spain, under master pastry chef, Jordi Roca) began trying Polish restaurants throughout New England, including those in the Polish Trainagle in Dorchester’s Andrew Square, searching in earnest for what he considered proper paczki.

Everywhere he went though, it tasted “stale,” he said, and was clearly made using inferior ingredients.

“They were trying to make as affordable a product as possible,” said Wozny. “What frustrated me was I wasn’t getting the product I wanted.”

Wozny was so sufficiently outraged by what he describes as this “insult to Polish culture” that he decided to personally take on the arduous task of creating paczki up to his own discerning standards.

“I wanted to be able to eat them myself, and I wanted a [Polish] bakery like I experienced in childhood,” he said.

Perhaps even more so, Wozny said he wanted to introduce local diners to Polish cuisine, and to “elevate their perception of Polish cuisine.”

Wozny knows his paczki might be a diner’s first taste of Polish cuisine, so he said he wants their experience to be “tasting divinity.”

To test out his cuisine, Wozny offered an assortment of mini and regular paczki for residents of his building to sample and solicited their feedback.

With the help of Jack Gurnon, owner of Charles Street Supply Co., Wozny also donated a batch of his paczki to parishioners who attended services at Church of the Advent to also gauge their reactions to his cuisine.

About a year and a half ago, Wozny officially launched Beacon Hill Bakery from his Blossom Street home, with a residential retail permit from the city. The business soon began offering delivery within a four-mile radius of Beacon Hill, as well as providing a pick-up option.

A few months ago, Beacon Hill Bakery also began operating at both the Copley Farmers Market and the Charlesgate Farmers Market, where the business’s custom-built, canary-colored, vending pushcart has already become a popular attraction at these events.

At the farmers markets, Wozny offers a quick tutorial for customers on the history of paczki in Polish cuisine, which includes recipes that date back hundreds of years.

Patrons of Beacon Hill Bakery can choose a regular or mini paczek, filled with either the costly rose hip jam (‘z Roza’), which was traditionally reserved for Polish aristocracy, or the more ubiquitous plum butter (‘powidla’), commonly the choice of Polish peasantry.

“I want their first experience to be a pinnacle of what Polish cuisine can taste like,” said Wozny, adding that tasting the rose hip jam allows his customers to eat like “historic Polish nobility.”

Last month, Beacon Hill Bakery added another item to the menu – a sugary liqueur glazing made with orange juice, topped with decorative orange peels and an edible 24-karat gold leaf.

Only the rose-hip option is available at the Copley Farmers Market, where Wozny has steadily increased his output from 78 paczki at the first event to 120 now, which he said is currently his cap for production.

“The farmers markets have been an experiment, and starting the business has been a series of experiments,” he said. “With the farmers markets, business has been truly exceptional so now the challenge is keeping up with production.”

Wozny has so far been at the helm of an essentially one-man operation, but he will be binging in a new employee on July 18 to operate the cart. While this extra hand will allow Beacon Hill Bakery to focus on increasing production, Wozny’s first and foremost concern is ensuring that they continue to serve the highest-quality Polish cuisine.

“We are limited not just by manpower but by a desire to prioritize the highest possible quality,” Wozny wrote. “Whenever we have a tradeoff  that is between making more revenue and making the best pastries in the world, we choose making the best pastries in the world. Our dough is cold fermented overnight and thrice-risen; we use the highest-quality ingredients commercially available; we went through 30 suppliers of rose hips before we decided this one is the best jam. It is very difficult to scale this quality, and we will do it slowly.”

Looking ahead, Matthew said his next objective is to get full use of his cart by featuring it at more farmers markets, as well as finding additional vending opportunities where it can be utilized.

Then, once Beacon Hill Bakery has established a “proven, loyal customer base,” Wozny said he would look to opening a brick-and-mortar location on Beacon Hill.

“That certainly is the aspiration,” Wozny told this reporter.

From now through the fall, Beacon Hill Bakery will be vending at the Copley Square Farmers Market on Fridays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and now on Tuesdays during the same hours, as well as at the Charlesgate Farmers Markets on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

For more on Beacon Hill Bakery, visit www.beaconhillbakery.com; call 617-412-7648; or follow the business on X (formerly Twitter)  @beaconhillbake.