In a medium bowl, mix the cherries with the breadcrumbs, sugar and cinnamon.
Arrange 1/2 of the cherry mixture lengthwise down the middle of the puff pastry, leaving a 2-inch border on both sides.
Fold the pastry over the cherries on top, and tuck in the sides.
Seal the top edge by brushing it under with the beaten egg and pressing it down lightly.
Brush the strudel all over with the egg. Bake in the oven until golden brown, about 35 to 40 minutes.
Strudel—which was invented around 1700 in Vienna and quickly spread throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire—was a staple of my family’s repertoire. Depending on the season, they filled it with apples, poppy seeds, walnuts, or apricots with quark.
Purists may certainly have fun making the dough from scratch—rolling it and gradually stretching it out with their hands until it’s paper-thin, see-through, and the size of a small carpet—but my mom never bothered. She normally had her hands already full with cooking lunch (always a soup and an entrée, always from scratch), so she used store-bought puff pastry, which did the job really well.
In this summer version, I am using fresh sour cherries mixed with breadcrumbs (to stop the juices from pooling during baking), sugar and cinnamon as a filling. Sour cherries are smaller with a thinner skin, and very tart, and therefore not as addictive in their raw state as regular cherries. Their season is short (June/July), and they might be hard to find in the States—I got lucky because I’m in the Czech Republic at the moment, and my grandma has a tree heavy with ripe sour cherries that need to be harvested—but if you can’t find fresh, use thawed frozen ones. In fact, in our family, we freeze most of the harvest because we can’t eat it all while fresh, and it is nice to have it on hand when you crave sour cherry strudel in the middle of January.
Preheat the oven to 185 degrees, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the breadcrumbs and toast, stirring frequently, until golden brown and evenly crisp. Transfer to a plate and let cool for 15 minutes.
Lightly flour a board or baking mat and a rolling pin, and roll out a sheet of the puff pastry into a 14x12-inch rectangle. Arrange 1/2 of the cherry mixture lengthwise down the middle of the puff pastry, leaving a 2-inch border on both sides. Fold the pastry over the cherries on top, and tuck in the sides. Carefully transfer the strudel from the board (or slide from the baking mat) onto the baking sheet.
Seal the top edge by brushing it under with the beaten egg and pressing it down lightly. Brush the strudel all over with the egg. Bake in the oven until golden brown, about 35–40 minutes.
2 reader comments on Tart & Czech: My Mom’s Sour Cherry Strudel.
I use regular supermarket puff pastry and it works fine. My mom in the Czech Republic occasionally buys it too. But sour cherries will be tough - they’re not in season right now, so probably use frozen ones if you can get them. And thanks for sharing your story about your great grandma!
Is there any special brand or size of puff pastry that you use? (We only have Pepperidge Farm Frozen Puff Pastry available in our area). I love cherry strudel and would love to try this. My great grandmother was a pastry chef in Europe, brought to the U.S. as a personal chef for Shirley Temple in the early 30’s. She worked hard, saved her money, and was eventually able to buy passage for her husband and 4 children to America. She and my grandmother thought nothing of the work involved in making strudel—stretching the dough over the dinner table until it was so thin you could see your hand through it. They also made farmer’s cheese and flavored it with sugar, lemon and yellow raisins. Then, a sprinkling with vanilla powdered sugar. With smaller families and less time, those big projects now are only made for holidays. To get my pastry fix, I would order Cherry, Apple or Cheese Danish from Bristol Farms, but it’s not the same. Your easier method sounds great. Thank you.