They start out as 4-pound hunks of flour, butter, margarine and lard, then get beaten, rolled and cut into fist-size domes.

Next, their jiggly bodies are submerged into steaming hot vegetable oil. After they are cooled, sugary jellies are pumped into their centers. Then with a final slathering of icing, the paczkis, a doughnutlike pastry that originated in Poland, are ready for sale.

Chicagoans will gorge themselves on hundreds of thousands of them on Fat Tuesday, the day before Lent begins. Over the last few days, Oak Mill Bakery’s headquarters in Des Plaines has been in overdrive, cranking out more than 80,000 paczkis (pronounced like poonch key) to be sold at its six locations in the Chicago area.

Read more at the Chicago Tribune.