Zwetschkenstrudel

Every August, the Zwetschken arrive at the Grünmarkt in Salzburg in flat wooden crates, dark purple and dusty with bloom. The farmers stack them by the kilo and the whole market smells like stone fruit and warm pavement. That's when I know it's time to make this strudel. Not before. If the plums aren't in season, the dish doesn't exist yet. Austrian cooking is seasonal, and that's part of what makes it honest.

Gretel always said that Zwetschkenstrudel was the strudel she loved best, more than Apfelstrudel, more than Topfenstrudel. Apfelstrudel gets all the attention, but Zwetschken have a tartness and depth that apples can't match. The plums collapse in the oven, their juices soaking into the buttered breadcrumbs while the hand-stretched dough goes golden and shattering around them. You cut into it and the layers separate like pages of a book, with that dark, jammy filling running through the center.

The dough is the same one you use for every strudel: flour, water, oil, a splash of vinegar, kneaded until smooth and rested until it stops resisting. Then you stretch it on a floured cloth until it's thin enough to read a newspaper through. I know that sounds like a cliché. It's not. That's the actual test. If you can see the pattern of your tablecloth through the dough, it's ready. If you can't, keep stretching.

This is good Austrian home cooking. It takes a little time and a little courage the first time you pull that dough across your knuckles, but once you've done it, you'll understand why Austrians have been making strudel this way for three hundred years. Nothing else gets you layers like these.