Pierogi #2: cake, all purpose flour comparison

After complaining that my previous attempt was too chewy, too tough, someone told me that Eastern European flour is softer (less protein) than our US flour. This time, we made two batches: one with just cake flour, the other with half cake, half all purpose. Both used butter, egg, and sour cream in the dough -- all will make for more tender dough. We stuffed them with mushroom/onion duxelles that we finely chopped in a food processor and cooked down.

We cooked all the pierogi identically but couldn't really tell the difference in dough texture, but I think they were more tender than the all-AP flour we did previously.

Served with sautéed onions and crunchy breadcrumbs

The recipe came from King Arthur Flour, which we use all the time; both our AP and Cake flours were KA. I like their recipe because it uses metric, which makes measuring fast.

241g King Arthur Cake Flour (for other batch, 120g Cake + 120g All-Purpose)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
113g sour cream
57g butter, melted

Combine all ingredients in food processor and pulse until it comes together.
Wrap in cling film and let rest 10 hours or so.

Roll out on a floured counter but don't flour the top or it makes it hard to seal the dough, so I used cling film on top so the rolling pin doesn't stick.

Note my super-clever rolling pin with O-Rings to give me consistent thickness

Cut out circles, and place in little pierogi / ravioli thing (white device in top right of photo), fill, and close to seal; you can fold by hand then crimp with a fork but we had the filler thing, it was cheap. We found the dough contracted a bit after cutting, making the rounds a bit small for the form; the contraction surprised us as the dough had rested a long time.

Simmer in salted water until the dough is tender and cooked; don't boil hard because it may break the soft dough.

Left is cake+AP, right is cake-only

We didn't fry these this time because we wanted to evaluate the dough alone;
next time, we will sauté in butter.
Serve with sautéed onions, and untraditional but tasty fried and seasoned breadcrumbs.

We froze the extras, and a week later, thawed them out and fried in a little butter. They were really quite good this way, much better than the floppy soft texture of the only-boiled. The skin had a slight crust and the dough was tender. This treatment redeemed the pierogi, and we'll definitely do them again this way -- boil then fry.

Pierogi lightly fried in butter, with fried shallots. Much better.