Bread knedlíky are made from old bread, flour, egg and milk, shaped into a log and then either steamed or boiled in water. The result is a soft, spongy roll that is dense enough to hold together when cut but light enough to melt in your mouth. Potato knedlíky are made similarly but use mashed potato instead of bread.
The job of a knedlík on the plate is to soak up sauce — especially the cream sauces and gravies that come with traditional Czech meat dishes. Without knedlíky, all that delicious sauce would be wasted. Eating the last sauce-soaked piece of dumpling is considered one of the best parts of the meal.
Sweet knedlíky are a different version entirely. These are made from potato or quark dough (quark is a soft fresh cheese) and stuffed with whole plums, cherries or strawberries. They are then sprinkled with breadcrumbs fried in butter and powdered sugar. Sweet fruit dumplings are eaten as a main meal in themselves, not as a dessert.
Knedlíky have been part of Czech cooking for hundreds of years and appear in cookbooks from the 1600s. In Slovakia and Austria, similar dumplings are also very popular — showing how food traditions cross over borders when people share the same mountains and valleys.