🍢 SNACK
Zapiekanka (Polish Open-Faced Mushroom Baguette)
A halved baguette piled with buttery fried mushrooms and onion, blanketed in grated yellow cheese, baked until bubbling and finished with a zigzag of ketchup and chives.
Polish · easy · serves 4
prep 15 min · cook 20 min
~634 cal · 28g protein · 70g carbs · 26g fat · 5g fiber · 11g sugars · 15g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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Zapiekanka is Poland's classic street snack: half a long baguette, split open, covered in fried mushrooms and cheese and baked until the cheese bubbles and the bread crisps at the edges, then handed over with a stripe of ketchup down the middle. The name comes from zapiekać, to bake something until it browns on top.
It appeared in the 1970s under Edward Gierek, when the government bought a licence to make French-style baguettes and small private food stalls were allowed again. Meat was expensive and often scarce, so mushrooms and cheese became the standard topping, and zapiekanki became the fast food of the late communist years, sold from kiosks and hatches all over the country.
After 1989 the rest of the world's fast food arrived, but zapiekanka never went away. It is still a student staple and a favourite street food, and the stands at Plac Nowy in Kraków's Kazimierz district have a cult following, selling versions with every topping imaginable.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally vegetarian and nut-, egg- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 4
- 2 long baguettes
- 500 g white button mushrooms, sliced
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 2 tbsp butter
- to taste salt
- to taste black pepper
- 200 g mild yellow cheese (Gouda or Edam), grated
- to serve ketchup
- 2 tbsp chives, snipped
Instructions
- 1Heat the oven to 200C (400F). Melt half the butter in a large frying pan and cook the onion over medium heat for about 3 minutes until translucent.
- 2Add the mushrooms and the rest of the butter and fry for 6 to 8 minutes, stirring now and then, until their liquid has evaporated and they start to brown. Season with salt and pepper.
- 3Cut each baguette in half across and then split each piece lengthwise, to give 4 long open halves per baguette, or leave them as two long halves each if your oven is big enough.
- 4Spread the mushrooms over the cut sides of the bread right to the edges and cover thickly with the grated cheese. Lay them on a baking tray.
- 5Bake for 7 to 10 minutes, until the cheese is melted and bubbling and the edges of the bread are crisp. Pipe a line of ketchup along each one, scatter with chives and eat hot.
Polish street food tradition (Kraków, Plac Nowy).
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Lesser Poland. Lesser Poland, around Krakow, cooks hearty highland food, sour rye zurek, pierogi, and smoked oscypek sheep cheese, which carries EU protected-origin status and may only be made in the Podhale highlands inside the region. Pierogi themselves are eaten across the whole country, but Krakow keeps the loudest claim on them and throws an annual festival to prove it. The Tatra mountains and the old royal capital shape its rustic table.
🗺️
Poland. Polish cooking is hearty comfort built for long winters, pierogi dumplings, hunter's bigos stew, sour rye soup, and cabbage in many forms. Pork, potatoes, mushrooms, and dill flavor a warming, generous home-cooking tradition.
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Europe. A surprising amount of European cooking is under five hundred years old. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, maize, beans and chocolate all crossed from the Americas after 1492, and none of them was trusted quickly: the potato took most of the eighteenth century to be accepted as food rather than animal fodder across much of the north.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Poland
Pierogi Ruskie (Potato & Cheese Dumplings)Tender dumplings stuffed with potato and farmer's cheese, finished in butter with golden onions.
Żurek (Sour Rye Soup)Poland’s tangy, smoky sour rye soup, built on a fermented rye starter, simmered with white sausage and marjoram, and crowned with a halved egg.
Bigos (Hunter’s Stew)Sauerkraut and fresh cabbage slow-cooked with assorted meats, mushrooms, and prunes, Poland’s national stew, better each day.
Browse all Poland recipes →
Good to know
You’ll need: Skillet or frying pan, Oven.
Storing it: Best the day it is made. Wrap well and refresh in a warm oven, or freeze and reheat straight from frozen.
Make it a Poland meal
KompotDrink
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Cuisine
Diet
Frequently asked questions
What is Zapiekanka (Polish Open-Faced Mushroom Baguette)?
A halved baguette piled with buttery fried mushrooms and onion, blanketed in grated yellow cheese, baked until bubbling and finished with a zigzag of ketchup and chives.
Where does Zapiekanka (Polish Open-Faced Mushroom Baguette) come from?
Zapiekanka (Polish Open-Faced Mushroom Baguette) is a Polish dish from Lesser Poland, Poland.
Can Zapiekanka (Polish Open-Faced Mushroom Baguette) be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Zapiekanka (Polish Open-Faced Mushroom Baguette) recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions. Treat the substitutions as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Zapiekanka (Polish Open-Faced Mushroom Baguette) safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we still count coconut as a tree nut to be cautious, although the FDA stopped listing it as one in 2025), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Zapiekanka (Polish Open-Faced Mushroom Baguette) take to make?
About 35 minutes total (15 minutes prep, 20 minutes cooking), serving 4.
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