Week 36: Strudel

Apple Strudel

We selected this dessert for the weekend of Labor Day because we have a family reunion in Ellis, KS that weekend, every year. My maternal grandparents were immigrants from Austria. Yes, they came here on a boat and learned English as a second language! Growing up, German foods were favorites and, while many of the foods we eat on a daily basis are no longer German, we love the traditional foods that we get to savor at our yearly family reunion. We often have bierocks (Runzas for my Nebraska friends) and galuskies (cabbage rolls). Lots of things with sauerkraut, sometimes even just plain old homemade sauerkraut. There are the fluffy dumplings which may or may not be German and pickles…lots of pickles. While the desserts are varied, pies are common. We decided that this year, since we were baking new things, we ought to try an Austrian dessert or at least a German one. We considered the Linzertorte which is an Austrian dessert (I still want to make one) but decided that we were making so many tarts/pies this year that we should try something different and landed on strudel: apfelstrudel (that’s apple strudel to you and me). I remember eating strudel at a reunion many years ago but it’s been awhile since anyone has brought any.

The strudel requires some techniques that we haven’t yet gotten to try. Mostly stretching the dough into a big, paper thin sheet before filling it. We watched the contestants on The Great British Baking Show do this and commented on how difficult it looked…and, of course, we wanted to try it (crazy, I know). Now, several recipes online and in our cook books use phyllo dough (which we made earlier this year when we made baklava and at that time, decided we would just purchase it in the future) but we wanted to make a traditional strudel dough.

This week we used recipes from King Arthur (I love their site) at KingArthurBaking.com: strudel dough and apple strudel. We did not substitute whole wheat for the flour because we didn’t want the bran pieces to cut the gluten strands that would allow us to stretch the dough. Neither of us wanted to take a dessert “failure” to the reunion so we didn’t want to experiment on that end. We did substitute Sola for the white sugar and for half of the brown sugar, we used Swerve brown sugar.

Ingredients

Dough

• 2 1/2 cups (298g) King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup (170g) warm water
• 2 large egg yolks
• 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon white vinegar

Filling

• 4 medium apples (567g, about 1 1/4 pounds), peeled and cored
• 1 cup (170g) golden raisins, packed
• 1/2 cup (113g) hot water
• 1/3 cup (67g) granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup (71g) light brown sugar, packed
• zest (grated rind) of 1 lemon
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons (43g) unsalted butter, melted

Topping

• 4 tablespoons (57g) unsalted butter, melted and divided
• 1/2 cup (57g) fine bread crumbs
• turbinado sugar, as needed, for sprinkling

NUTRITION INFORMATION

Directions

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook, mix the flour and salt on low speed to combine.
2. In a container with a spout, whisk the water, egg yolks, oil, and vinegar to combine. With the mixer running, add the liquid to the mixer in a slow, steady stream.
3. Mix on low speed for 10 minutes. At this point, the dough should have formed a ball around the dough hook, and should appear relatively smooth. It should be slightly tacky (not sticky) but not dry — if it seems dry, add more water 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing for a full minute before checking the texture.
4. Raise the mixer speed to medium and continue to mix for 10 minutes more. Transfer the dough to a medium-sized oiled bowl and turn the dough over a few times to coat it lightly with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. The finished, rested dough is now ready to be stretched and filled.
5. Line a tabletop with a tablecloth; oilcloth or linen work especially well. A folding card table, kitchen table, or any surface you can walk all the way around will work; it will make the stretching easier.
6. Remove the strudel dough from the refrigerator. Lightly oil your hands. The dough should feel lightly tacky but not sticky, and it should stretch easily. Start by stretching the dough a little like a pizza, trying to keep it rectangular as you work. Once the dough is no longer easy to manage with your hands, lay it down on the covered table.
7. Use closed fists to stretch the dough. Put your hands under the dough at one corner, and gently work your fists outwards, working toward the edge of the table. Continue to do this, bit by bit, working around the dough to slowly stretch it out. The goal is to get it so thin you can see through it (if your tablecloth has a pattern, this can be a good guideline). Don’t be alarmed if the dough tears (you’ll be rolling it up, and the tears will get rolled up and hidden inside). The dough is very strong, and you should be able to stretch it without major tearing.
8. Once the dough is stretched to the edge of the table, use your fingers to pull gently around the edges to make sure they aren’t too thick.
9. To assemble the strudel: Drizzle the strudel with butter (don’t brush it on; you may tear the dough) and top with bread crumbs, as directed in your choice of the recipes listed in “tips,” below. Spread with filling.
10. Working with one of the shorter sides, gently grab the dough and roll it up into a tight spiral. Use the tablecloth to help you — the less you handle the dough, the less likely you are to rip it.
11. Use scissors to cut any excess dough away from the ends of the strudel, and discard.
12. Lift up the rolled strudel, seam side down, and place it diagonally onto a 13″ x 18″ half-sheet pan. If it’s too long to fit, you can form it into a horseshoe shape instead. Finish and bake according to each recipe’s specific directions.

Filling

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. To make the filling: Grate the apples on the medium hole of a box grater, then transfer to a fine mesh strainer. Squeeze the apples well to remove any excess moisture.
3. Place the raisins in a small, heat-safe bowl. Pour the hot water over them and soak for 5 to 10 minutes. Drain the raisins and squeeze out the excess liquid.
4. Place the soaked raisins, sugars, lemon zest, cinnamon, ginger, and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until the mixture is fully combined and looks a bit pasty. Add the melted butter and pulse to combine, then transfer to a bowl and stir in the grated apples by hand. Set the filling aside.
5. To assemble: Stretch the strudel dough as described in the recipe. Drizzle with 3 tablespoons of the melted butter, then sprinkle with the bread crumbs. Dab the filling over the bread crumbs and distribute as evenly as you can. Roll up and trim the strudel as the recipe directs, and transfer it to the prepared baking sheet.
6. To finish and bake: Brush the strudel with the remaining tablespoon of melted butter and sprinkle it with turbinado sugar. Bake until the strudel is golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes. Rotate the pan halfway through the baking time. Remove from the oven and cool at least 15 minutes before slicing and serving.

Our Experience

We whipped up the dough in no time and put it in the refrigerator overnight as directed. It was just adding the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and then letting the KitchenAid do the work.

Again, it was really easy to throw the dough together…no yeast at all! The flour and salt were in the bowl and once we measured the wet ingredients and mixed them all together the dough was the next step.

When I put the dough in the bowl I kept thinking it looked like a bread dough and that it was going to double in size. Of course, that was not going to be the case! Still felt a little disappointed when I took it out of the refrigerator in the morning and it was the same size until I remined myself it wasn’t supposed to get bigger.

We began making the filling by peeling the apples and then shredding them. Once again, with only 4 apples to peel we did it by hand rather than using the apple peeler on the KitchenAid. We used 2 pink lady apples and two Granny Smith apples.

The recipe called for golden raisins; I bought them but the regular raisins in my lazy Susan would have worked just as well.

This was our second time using the new food processor. It is huge compared to my old one but it’s a beast at getting things done quickly. My old one was over 30 years old and I didn’t realize how inefficient it was until I used the new one.

We pulsed the ingredients as directed and it didn’t take very many to get to this stage.

We didn’t pulse the raisin mix until it was a paste because we thought a few small chunks might be a nice texture. We then added the apples.

Once we had the filling completed, we got the dough out and began stretching. It was very fluid and stretched very easily. We put a (clean) cotton bead sheet on the dining room table. It is about 44″ wide and we stretched it to about 36″ by 36″ square. Most of it was a thin membrane that you could easily see through. We tried to stretch the edges some more but they didn’t budge and we kept putting holes in them as we stretched. In the end we stopped to trying to get it thinner at the edges because the ends were going to get cut off and the start of it could be thicker just like the end since they weren’t going to be seen.

We would have liked to have served it hot out of the oven, but it wasn’t going to be served for two days. It looked crispy on the outside and, ideally, it would have been crisp to eat…at least on the exterior. We put it in the oven at the reunion, but it wasn’t hot enough to crisp it up. It just warmed it up a little bit.

What we liked.

I had single piece at the reunion and I thought it had great flavor but was soft. My cousin Tony told me that strudel isn’t supposed to be crunchy anyway. I would have liked to have had another one but there weren’t any left to take home.

I was a little worried about the shredded apples. I wasn’t sure what I thought they would be like, maybe it was a textural concern, but the filling was really flavorful and it definitely tasted like apples even though there wasn’t a full layer of filling on the entire sheet of dough. I liked the dough even though it wasn’t crisp. It was a cross between an apple turnover and an apple dumpling. I thought I might change the apples to slices but I don’t think I would. The shredded apples were small and thin, just what the delicate dough needed. I think sliced apples would have been chunky and broken through the see through dough like a football player through a banner. 😉 They looked like hash browns which, visually, was weird but I got over that pretty easily after eating one.

The 4 of us at the reunion all gave it a thumbs up (knowing that it wasn’t as fresh as it should have been and therefore, not as tasty).

What we would change.

It goes without saying that I would like to make it again and serve it right away. It really wasn’t difficult with more than one person stretching the dough and the preparation was about as easy as an apple dessert could get. And, it is worth making again!

I still think we would sprinkle the top with cinnamon sugar but we might wait until after it had baked a little bit or possibly after it was out of the oven. It just made it look more done than it was and with our temperamental oven, we have to rely on looks more than a timer.

Finally, we will have to figure out a better way to put the filling on. It doesn’t spread well and the dough is too fragile even if it did. So, we will ponder that before we make it again.

What we learned.

Well, the stretching was amazing. It was so cool to see the wonders of gluten in action. (Sorry my gluten sensitive friends, it IS a wonder and I’m amazed at our ancestors for discovering its wonderful properties without so much as a microscope.) We also learned that if we want to make a fresh dish for future reunions, we are going to have to get a hotel room with an oven!!

Until next week, Happy Baking!