Soviet Pyshki Machines Nobody Makes Anymore: How We Find Them and Bring Them Back to Life

There is a machine you simply can’t buy anymore. Not new, not made to order, not built “from the original blueprints”, anywhere in the world. Production stopped in 1991, and not a single one has been made since. Every working unit that has survived to this day is the last of its kind. This Soviet pyshki machine is what we use to make our pyshki, St. Petersburg’s hot yeast rings dusted with powdered sugar, and we tracked down, bought and brought back to life every one of our machines ourselves, one at a time.

So this story is less about hardware and more about how pyshki get made when people take the craft seriously.

What the Soviet pyshki machine is and where it came from

Pyshki iz Detstva® (“Pyshki from Childhood”) are cooked on an original Soviet pyshki machine. This hard-working machine has a biography of its own.

And it’s a military one. In the 1950s, the first machines of this kind were built by Soviet defence factories under a conversion programme: a directive ordered part of their production to switch over to peacetime machinery. A factory that had been making equipment for the army yesterday began making equipment for city canteens. Production was later handed over to a factory in Kyiv, which kept assembling them right up to the early nineties.

So a pyshka made on a Soviet machine is quite literally cooked on equipment with seventy years of history, the very kind of machine this way of cooking was invented for.

Why Soviet pyshki machines are no longer made

In 1991, production of pyshki machines stopped completely. The factories moved on to other things, and since then nobody has launched a new batch, in Russia or anywhere else. The blueprints became outdated, demand crumbled along with the country itself (the Soviet Union), and the line was simply shut down.

It sounds like a dry fact from a reference book, but it has a direct consequence. Every surviving pyshki machine today is a finite artefact. There’s a limited number of them, and it only keeps shrinking: some went for scrap, some are rotting away in garages, some broke beyond repair. There will be no new ones. Think of a vintage car that has left the assembly line for good: it exists as long as the surviving examples do, and once they’re gone, it won’t turn up anywhere ever again.

That’s why we can’t order a machine over the phone. We have to hunt for one.

How we find and restore the machines

We search for original Soviet machines all over the country. You can’t buy them in a shop or have them delivered from a warehouse, so we look wherever they ended up: in closed-down canteens, old storage depots, people’s garages and sheds, following up listings and tip-offs. We find one, strike a deal, buy it and bring it to St. Petersburg.

Then comes the longest part: restoration. A machine that has stood idle for twenty or thirty years can’t just be plugged in and put in front of guests. We take it apart unit by unit, go over each one, replace whatever is worn out, clean, adjust and test it under load, again and again, until the machine runs the way it did when it left the factory. It’s unhurried handwork: getting a single machine right takes weeks.

And that’s the answer to how pyshki are made at Pyshki iz Detstva. First you find a machine that’s no longer sold anywhere, then you patiently bring it back to life, and only then do you start cooking.

The nameplate as proof

Every machine has a factory nameplate, a small metal plate fixed on at the plant. It shows the year of manufacture, the serial number and the specifications. We don’t paint over it, remove it “to make things look neater” or hide it. Quite the opposite: we take good care of it, because it’s a factory document.

The nameplate answers the main question of any sceptical guest. If someone doubts that the machine is really Soviet, we won’t argue; we’ll simply show them the plate. The year was stamped at the factory, the serial number is unique, and there’s no way to fake that. The sandwich board outside one of our cafés states the exact year: 1989. Our other machines have their own years on their own nameplates.

That’s the shortest proof of authenticity there is: metal with a date stamped into it.

Why our pyshki machine stands in plain view

A machine like this could easily be tucked away in the kitchen, with finished pyshki carried out to the counter. Plenty of places do exactly that. We do things differently.

Our machine stands in plain view, right in the café, and any guest can stand next to it and watch the whole process. The dough dispenser pushes out a ring of dough, it drops into hot oil and travels round the carousel: it cooks on one side, the chute (a little slide) flips it over onto the other, and a minute later a finished golden pyshka rolls into the tray. Children claim their spots by the glass as if they were at a show, and grown-ups film videos. We call it the machine theatre: here you can see authenticity with your own eyes.

And that’s more honest than any words. Authenticity you can see and touch needs no advertising: the machine is working right in front of you, and there’s nothing left to prove.

Every machine has a name

Once a machine becomes part of the café, you want to give it a name. That’s exactly what happened with us: each machine is named after a Russian emperor or empress.

At 118 Nevsky Prospekt, by Vosstaniya Square, “Elizaveta Petrovna” (Empress Elizabeth) is at work. On Malaya Sadovaya St., “Ekaterina Alekseevna” (Catherine the Great) does the cooking: her monument stands just a few steps away in Catherine Garden, so the name more or less chose itself. At 2 Moskovsky Prospekt, by Sennaya Square, you’ll find “Pyotr Alekseevich” (Peter the Great), named after the founder of the city. Three machines are in service, and several more are waiting their turn in reserve for future cafés.

There’s real substance behind the names. Each machine has its own road to us, its own year on the nameplate and its own temperament at work, and a name turns it from a piece of metal into a living character in the story. Guests sense this straight away and come “to see Catherine” or “to see Peter”.

How a Soviet machine cooks pyshki

And finally, the thing all of this was for. An old machine like this cooks pyshki differently from the way a modern deep fryer cooks its food.

The dough hits the hot oil and seals instantly: within a second, a firm crust forms on it. Because of this, almost no oil gets inside, and the pyshka bakes like bread. Hence the result everyone notices: it’s light and not greasy. Grown-ups eat them guilt-free, and children eat lots of them. Behind this lies the simple physics of hot oil and dough, the very reason these machines were created in the first place.

So the chain is an honest one: a rare machine → hand restoration → proper cooking → the real pyshka. Remove any link and the result is gone.

Come and see for yourself

We could talk about the machine for ages, but it’s more honest to see it once. Stand next to it, read the year on the nameplate, watch the dough turn into a hot pyshka, and try one straight off the machine.

Take one. Just don’t wander too far: you’ll be back for more.

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