About us: the story of St. Petersburg pyshki

Pyshki iz Detstva, “Pyshki from Childhood”, brings a true St. Petersburg food tradition back to the modern city: pyshki, St. Petersburg's hot yeast rings dusted with powdered sugar, made on the same Soviet machines and to the 1958 recipe.

1958: how Leningrad pyshki began

The pyshechnaya, a pyshki café, first appeared in Leningrad (as St. Petersburg was called in Soviet times) in 1958, at 25 Zhelyabova St., today's Bolshaya Konyushennaya St. The recipe was developed by food technologists at the Leningrad Trust of Canteens and Cafés: real people at a real institution.

The first pyshki machines were built by Soviet military plants under the conversion programme of the 1950s, when they were told to make civilian equipment. Production later moved to a factory in Kyiv. The dough dropped into hot oil and sealed instantly, so the pyshka came out as if baked, with a crisp crust and a soft, tender crumb.

Within a few years the pyshki café had become part of the city's character. Students, workers, engineers and professors all stood at the same counter, and at a table with hot pyshki and glasses of coffee, social divides faded away. That is how the pyshka entered the memory of the city, together with the Leningrad that invented it.

The 1990s: the pyshki tradition nearly vanished

In 1991 the production of pyshki machines stopped. The factories moved on to other work, and nobody has built a new machine since. Most of Leningrad's pyshki cafés closed around the same time. Out of dozens, essentially only one survived, on Bolshaya Konyushennaya St., on the very spot where it all began in 1958. We respect it as a monument to the tradition and do not presume to dispute its history. We came with a different mission.

Pyshki iz Detstva: how we began

Pyshki iz Detstva started as an independent project by Konstantin Bogdan and Elena Khovracheva. It is a registered trademark ® No. 1143773 (Rospatent certificate, priority date 22 July 2024). The goal is simple: to bring the St. Petersburg pyshki tradition back into the everyday life of the city.

We are restorers and successors. We take a real machine, a real recipe and real people, and bring them back to places where they have long been missing. Today we have three cafés in central St. Petersburg, and the chain is growing.

Soviet pyshki machines no one makes anymore

Since 1991 not a single new pyshki machine has been made anywhere in the world, and the supply of old ones is limited. You cannot buy a new one, order one from a factory or build a copy. A machine like this can only be found and restored.

We track down original Soviet machines all over the country, from the military plants of the 1950s and the Kyiv factory of the 1960s to 1980s, buy them and bring them here. Then we bring them back to working order, one component at a time. On every machine we keep the factory nameplate showing the year of manufacture, serial number and specifications. The sandwich board at one of our cafés shows 1989, and the other machines have dates of their own.

Each of our three cafés has one of these machines at work, and several more are waiting in reserve for future locations. The machine stands in plain view by the counter, so every guest can follow the whole journey of a pyshka: from a ring of dough, to the flip on the chute (a little slide), to the finished pyshka on the tray.

Every machine is named after a Russian emperor or empress. On Nevsky Prospekt, near Vosstaniya Square, “Elizaveta Petrovna” (Empress Elizabeth) is at work. On Malaya Sadovaya St. it is “Ekaterina Alekseevna” (Catherine the Great), whose monument stands a few steps away in Catherine Garden. On Moskovsky Prospekt, near Sennaya Square, you will find “Pyotr Alekseevich” (Peter the Great), named after the founder of the city. For us, each machine becomes a living part of the story, with its own character, its own year of manufacture and its own road to us. Regulars get used to it and say they are off “to Catherine's” or “to Peter's”.

The restored 1958 pyshki recipe

We rebuilt the original recipe through experiment: dozens of rounds of adjusting the dough, the temperatures and the timing. The strongest confirmation came from older guests who remember how pyshki used to taste. One regular, a man of about seventy, once worked on a machine like this himself. He travels right across the city to see us and says: “You've got that very same taste.”

It all comes down to physics. The dough hits the hot oil and within a second sets into a firm crust, so almost no oil gets inside. The pyshka bakes like bread and comes out light: grown-ups enjoy it without guilt, and children ask for more.

The team: keepers of a living history

The people behind our counter are storytellers. Each of them knows a set of key facts: about the machine itself and the factory that made it, about how the hot oil seals the dough, about the pyshka as a symbol of post-war Leningrad, and about the St. Petersburg sights and streets around the café. Nobody recites these facts from a script. They come up naturally in conversation when a guest asks a question or stops to watch the machine.

So every guest leaves with two things: a hot pyshka in hand and a little story in mind. And they come back for the next story.

What's next

Today we have three cafés in central St. Petersburg: at 118 Nevsky Prospekt (by Moskovsky railway station), 1/25 Malaya Sadovaya St. (by Gostiny Dvor) and 2 Moskovsky Prospekt (by Sennaya Square). Addresses and opening hours are on the Locations page.

Our next goal is 10–15 cafés in St. Petersburg, each with its own restored machine and its own team. Once the chain in the city reaches five locations or more, we will offer franchises in other Russian cities where the pyshki tradition does not exist yet.

The founders

Come and try pyshki in St. Petersburg

The easiest way to get to know Pyshki iz Detstva is to drop into one of our three cafés and try a pyshka on the spot. Take one and don't wander far: you'll be back for more.