Sauerkraut Strudel

This is a story about sauerkraut strudel which was a standard in my husband John’s family. They made it for all the holidays, along with potato strudel and kasha strudel. When John’s sister Violet got married, she married a man who was immediately conscripted into the army. She was settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was holiday time and she phoned her mother in upstate New York for the sauerkraut strudel recipe. Violet went to work on it and she worked on it but she never could get it to come out right. Once the dough even ended up on the ceiling! One year her mother came to visit and Violet said that she wanted to make the strudel. Her mother put her hand into the flour to start the dough and told her no wonder it never works, “this flour is too damp”. Her mother was such an experienced cook that she could tell just by the feel of the flour that it would never work for this recipe.

John then learned to make the sauerkraut strudel. He would roll the strudel dough out six feet in diameter–the size of a table. It became our family tradition that he would make sauerkraut strudel for the holidays.

Svea S.