Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things.
- My Favourite Things, The Sound of Music
I've always wanted to eat one of these, ever since hearing the song My Favourite Things, even though I had no idea what a strudel was. We finally had the chance to order apple strudel in Berlin, but unfortunately, it came with nuts. Here's the one we had in Berlin.
I'd pretty much forgotten about it until a fateful kitchen meeting. The person who came up to me saying he was going to try making croissants (not the one I competed against in the croissant bake off, a different person) mentioned that he always wanted to try making apple strudel. He described it as such a complex pastry, which tributed also said after I told him about making croissants. So that settled it. My next project would be apple strudel.
But before I get into that, there's the slight tangent of the Case of the Mysterious Strudel Guy. I said before that people I had never spoken before were suddenly coming up to me and talking about food, and such was the Strudel Guy. I had no idea what his name was, or even which team be was in, I swear I had never seen him before. And yet, as I was browsing through some photos of a work event 3 years ago, there he was! So began the hunt to track down the name of the Strudel Guy. Given who he was sitting with at the event, I had a fair idea of which team he was in, so I asked my mole in that team (one of the new grads), who had no clue who he was. Well, that was a bit strange, I was so sure he was in that team.
I began passing that photo around to the people I was close to, asking if any of them knew who he was. Not a single hit. With the pretense of getting a glass of water from the kitchen, I wandered around the floor trying to find out where he sat. Bingo! Unfortunately, he did not have a name plate on his desk, but I did manage to work out that my original assumption was correct, that he was in the team I thought he was in. So I knew where he sat, but I still didn't know his name. The case had to be put on hold, because unlike how it sounds in my blog, I actually do do work while at work, and that takes priority. I was so absorbed in work, that I forgot that I still had that picture of Strudel Guy open, with a giant red circle around it.
One of the testers came up to me, "Why do you have a picture of (Strudel Guy's real name) circled?" And thus, the mystery was solved. I am the greatest detective.
OK, back to the strudel.
I didn't want to cheat and use pre-made pastry, so I skipped any recipe titled "Easy Apple Strudel". I settled on this one, as the author said it came from her grandmother's cookbook: http://www.lilvienna.com/original-viennese-apple-strudel/ and has lots of handy photos.
Ingredients
For the strudel dough
1/3 cup lukewarm water (80 ml / 80 g)
1 tablespoon + ½ teaspoon neutral tasting vegetable oil (15 g)
½ teaspoon vinegar (or lemon juice)
1/8 teaspoon table salt or fine sea salt
145 g bread flour (1 cup) (substitute with all purpose flour)
½ teaspoon vegetable oil for brushing the dough
flour for dusting
For the filling
3 tablespoons unsalted butter (40 g)
2/3 cups fine bread crumbs (80 g)
5 tablespoons granulated sugar (65 g)
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 tablespoons raisins (50 g)
3 tablespoons rum or lukewarm water for soaking the raisins
2 lbs sweet-tart apples (e.g. MacIntosh) (900 g) (I used Jazz apples. and they worked very well)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons melted butter for brushing the dough (divided)
confectioner’s sugar for dusting
whipped cream for serving (optional)
Start with the dough. Mix the water, oil, vinegar / juice and salt. Add half the flour and mix again. Slowly begin adding flour until it becomes not-sticky enough to knead. Lightly flour a flat surface / pastry mat and knead for about 10 minutes. The recipe says to throw the dough onto your surface a few times while kneading to help gluten development. I don't know about the gluten part, but throwing the dough feels good!
You can already start to feel how stretchy the dough is! Once it starts getting smooth, fold over the edges underneath it to make it into a ball, put it back into the bowl, and brush with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and leave in a warm place for 1 hour. Note: As there is no yeast, there will be no rising, so don't panic!
Move on to the filling. In a small pan, melt the butter and add the breadcrumbs. Toast until the breadcrumbs go golden brown. Enjoy the smell of toasted buttery bread crumbs. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
As that cools, mix the sugar and cinnamon, then mix that into the breadcrumb mixture.
Soak the raisins in water.
Skin, core and quarter the apples. For each quarter, cut into slices about 3-4mm thick. Add lemon juice to the apple slices, to stop them going too brown.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
Once the dough is ready, lightly flour your surface and roll it out until it's about 30cm wide (flour the top of the dough, too. Don't worry too much about the shape now.
The original recipe says to lightly flour a tablecloth and transfer the dough there, but we don't have a tablecloth, and I'd be worried about the food safety of our bedsheets (I've seen enough episodes of CSI....), so I used a couple of sheets of baking paper instead. Start stretching the dough out with the backs of your hands. This part is actually super fun, I was surprised at how elastic the dough was!
Warning: I should add that there is a very real danger that a wild husband will appear and want to act like Captain Falcon and Strudel Punch your dough while it is in the vulnerable state. A stern reminder that doing so will result in no strudel is enough to stop this.
Try and stretch it into a long rectangle. Mine was too wide, which became a problem as you'll see later, so try to make it as long as you can!
Once it's quite thin, gently stretch it so that you do have something that resembles a rectangle. The recipe says to cut off the thick ends, but I didn't and I'll explain in a bit.
Look how thin it is!
Melt half the remaining butter, and brush it on half of your dough. Spread the breadcrumb mixture on the other half, leaving about a 3cm edge. Drain the raisins and mix with the apples, then put it on top of the bread crumb mixture.
Fold up the edges on the top and button. With the help of the baking paper, start to gently roll up the dough, starting on the apple end.
I found some leaked out from the side, but I was able to stretch the thick dough at the end to help hold it back in. Mine is kinda wrinkly, but if you can get it smooth, then your strudel will come out prettier!
Gently transfer to your baking tray. Because mine was so wide, it didn't fit on the tray, and I had to curve it, but as I was sliding it across, it broke, and all the filling fell out. :( I kinda tucked it back underneath. Brush with the remaining melted butter, and bake for 30 minutes.
It looks ugly, but tastes delicious!
Dust with icing sugar, and serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.
I'm going to leave some on Strudel Guy's desk tomorrow morning as a surprise. Which means I need to get up super early to whip some cream.
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