Limburg vlaai: thin crust, generous filling
A Limburg vlaai is not a pie made with puff pastry. It is yeast dough, fruit from a fruit-growing region, and a festive bake that was already known by that name in the nineteenth century.
In 1878, Jacobus Craandijk encountered on Limburg farms ‘the cake of wheat flour with fruit purée’ that people called vlaai. The EU dossier for the protected designation repeats that passage: harvest feast, white bread and vlaai made from wheat and fruit. That description is included in the application for the protected name. Farms baked with fruit from their own orchards. Both Dutch and Belgian Limburg were fruit-growing regions; cherries, plums and apples filled the seasons.
What the name still requires today is recognisable. Yeast dough, relatively thin (‘thin crust’), topped with a generous filling (‘thick spread’). The entire vlaai goes into the oven in one go. Outside Dutch or Belgian Limburg, the protected name cannot simply be displayed in a shop window. At home, you bake ‘Limburg-style’. Cherries from a jar are no deception: the dossier mentions the canning industry that made vlaai possible outside the fruit season.
Below is a cherry vlaai for a standard tin, making about ten slices. Drain the filling well: you want a juicy layer of fruit, but also a base firm enough to lift a slice.
Let the vlaai cool before cutting it so the filling runs less. A lattice of dough on top already reveals what lies beneath the crust. At the table, you are sharing not only a bake, but also a piece of Limburg baking tradition.
Get cooking
10 slices
- 250 g wheat flour
- 7 g fresh yeast or 3 g dry yeast
- 125 ml lukewarm milk
- 40 g butter
- 30 g sugar
- 1 egg yolk
- pinch of salt
- 1 jar pitted cherries with juice (approx. 700 g)
- 2 tbsp cornflour or potato starch
- 2 tbsp additional sugar for the filling
- Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm milk. Knead with the flour, butter, sugar, egg yolk and salt into a smooth dough. Leave to rise for 45 minutes.
- Thicken the cherry juice with the cornflour and sugar to make a thick sauce; stir in the cherries.
- Line a greased vlaai tin (approx. 28 cm) with two-thirds of the dough. Spoon in the filling. Roll the remaining dough into strips or leave the vlaai open.
- Bake in a preheated oven at around 200 °C until the edge is golden brown, about 20–25 minutes. Leave to cool.
Recipe not kitchen-tested. Allergens: gluten, milk, egg. Check the labels of all products used.
Look at the side: a thin dough wall and a deep filling, not layers of puff pastry.