For ➏350 g flour
warm water or 2 eggs, lightly beaten*
1 ts of vinegar
salt
1 kg cherries, pitted & sliced**
25 g bread crumbs, toasted in a little butter
1 lemon, juiced & zest grated
50 g butter
125 g sugar
Sift the flour on a workplace, make a well in it. Add a pinch of salt, water or eggs, vinegar and knead the mixture well into a smooth dough that does not stick.
Roll the sheet out thinly (1 mm). Let rest for 30 m. Put on a clean kitchen towel and push out the dough into a rectangle.**
Preheat oven to 180°C.
Mix the cherries, bread crumbs, lemon juice, grated zest, butter and sugar together. Spread over the dough. Leave a free border at both side and and on the side close to you.
Lift the end of the towel towards you and gently push the dough to roll up. Use the last border part to seal the package. Seal the left and right borders as well. (Seal with some egg white.)
Put on a sheet of baking paper. Move gently into the oven and bake for 45 m.
Serve slices of the strucolo warm or lukewarm. A good grappa will make excellent company.
*Or just the yolks for a richer dough. Save egg whites for sealing.
**You can use apricots instead: 700 g apricots, pitted, sliced thinly + 80 g sugar + 25 g bread crumbs, browned in a little unsalted butter + 25 g butter. Change the filling to apples (and raisins). Walnuts and raisins with some rum and chocolate will do as well.
***As the dough is not sugared, it can be used for savory filling as well.
Until the end of the First World War, the Goriza province of the Alpine Friuli stayed a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The other provinces of the Carso plateau were already turned over to Italy in 1866, but stayed more central European than the rest of Italy. It has developed a cuisine that's close to Austrian and German cuisine.
This struciolo seems a variation of the classic Austrian Apfelstrudel, made with apples. This one, with cherries, is called Weichselstrudel in German. It goes well with the Trieste goulash (Gulyas alla Triestina) or Friuli winter salad for a hearty winter meal.
The strudel is a variation to the Ottoman cuisine baklava, made with flaky phyllo dough (which some cooks use as a replacement), and may have been developed in the Byzantine era. During Turkish occupation of central Europe in the 16th and 17th century, baklava shifted in some of these areas to a filling with apples, and a high gluten dough. From the former Turkish territories Croatia and Bosnia, close enough to Friuli to have a been a direct influence, and Hungary, it came to Austria, and became popular in the whole former Habsburg Empire and Germany. By immigration from central Europe, it spread to the United States, Israel and Brazil.
