péci / péct — to bake, to roast

Péct / péci means "to bake" — bread, cakes, biscuits — and also "to roast" meat in the oven. It belongs to a small but high-frequency group of Czech verbs whose stem ends in a velar consonant (k or h), and like all of them it shows a sound change that surprises learners: the k of the past tense turns into č in the present. You write pekl but peču. This page lays out the whole paradigm and, more importantly, explains the alternation so you can predict the same pattern in moct, říct, and téct.

Why the consonant keeps changing

The root of this verb is pek-. In Old Czech, when this k met a front vowel (e, i), it softened — palatalised — into č. The present-tense endings begin with e, so the k meets a front vowel and becomes č: peč-e-š → pečeš. The past tense ending (-l) begins with a consonant, so nothing softens, and the original k survives: pek-l → pekl. The infinitive shows yet a third outcome: k + t fused historically into ct, giving péct (and the older variant péci).

So one root surfaces three ways:

• peč- before the present-tense vowels → peču, pečeš, peče…
• pek- before the -l of the past and the imperative → pekl, peč (imperative is special, see below)
• péct / péci in the infinitive

The infinitive doublet: péct and péci

This verb has two infinitives that mean exactly the same thing. Péct is the everyday spoken and written-neutral form; péci is the older, literary form you still meet in cookbooks, recipes, and elevated prose.

Both are correct. If in doubt, use péct.

Present tense

The k has become č throughout — there is no k anywhere in the present tense.

The first person peču and third plural pečou have literary variants peku / pekou that keep the old k, exactly as moct has můžu/mohu. In speech you will almost always hear peču and pečou.

Past tense

Here the k comes back, because the past ending -l begins with a consonant. The participle is pekl and it agrees with the subject in gender and number, exactly like any l-participle.

Note the neuter plural pekla, identical in spelling to the feminine singular but distinct in function (ta koťata pekla — those kittens were baking, in a fairy tale). The full past tense adds the auxiliary jsem, jsi… for the first and second person.

Imperative

The imperative is built on the peč- stem (the velar is soft here too): peč (you, singular), pečme (let's), pečte (you, plural).

Future

Péct is imperfective, so its future is analytic: the future of být + the infinitive — budu péct, budeš péct, bude péct…

For a single, completed baking event, use the perfective upéct (see below), whose present-tense forms express the future on their own.

The perfective: upéct

Adding the prefix u- gives the perfective partner upéct / upéci (to bake/get baked, once and completely). It conjugates identically — upeču, upečeš, upeče…; past upekl, upekla, upekli, upekla (neuter pl.); imperative upeč. Its present forms carry future meaning, as all perfectives do.

Government

Péct takes a direct object in the accusative — what you're baking — with no preposition: péct chleba (to bake bread), péct maso (to roast meat), péct dort (to bake a cake). For whom you bake goes in the dative: upeču ti dort (I'll bake you a cake).

The same class: moct, říct, téct

Every velar-stem verb plays the same k/č (or h/ž) game. Recognising the pattern in one tells you the whole group:

(Moct has h/ž rather than k/č — mohu/můžeš — and forms no everyday imperative, but the principle is the same: a velar root softening before front vowels.) See the moct and říct pages for their full paradigms.

Common mistakes

Carrying the k into the present tense — the single most common error:

(Peku exists as a literary variant, but learners almost always mean the ordinary peču.)

Carrying the č into the past tense, where the k must reappear:

Softening the imperative the wrong way or adding -i:

Using the feminine-singular spelling for a neuter plural subject's participle — they happen to coincide, so check the subject:

Key takeaways

• One root, pek-, three faces: peč- (present, imperative), pek- (past), péct/péci (infinitive).
• Present has no k: peču, pečeš, peče, pečeme, pečete, pečou.
• Past restores the k: pekl, pekla, peklo, pekli, pekly, pekla (neuter pl.).
• Imperative peč, pečte; future budu péct; perfective upéct.
• The k/č alternation is shared by moct, říct, téct — learn it once, recognise it everywhere.