The Barbeardian

Hungarian Apple Strudel

Read this introductory paragraph and see what a giant nerd Jesse is:

I totally rushed the dough-stretching part of this recipe and I feel bad about it. The Hungarian chick that my pastry book talks about can stretch the dough out to like 8 ft. or whatever. The further you stretch it out, the more layers of flaky goodness you get. Well, mine was substantially less, and my excuse was that I had to get to music trivia. I have a music trivia night that I attend every Monday. I actually schedule things around this. Well, as you'll see, the dough-stretching is really fucking hard and it's not the kind of thing you want to be doing inside of a strict time frame. This is ain't no damn chocolate chip cookies, son.


Anyway, the following is how you make Hungarian apple strudel.

2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp butter (room temperature)
1 egg (room temperature)
1/2 c. water

1 lb. cherry preserves
1 c. dry bread crumbs
1 c. sugar
2 c. ground walnuts (I left 'em out, I usually don't like walnuts in desserts)
cinnamon (use as desired)
1/2 c. raisins (plumped)
4 to 5 apples (I used Granny Smiths, but it's whatever you feel like)
1/2 lb unsalted butter

confectioner's sugar (use as desired)

One thing you'll want to get out of the way first is your apples. It's part of the filling, and you need to core, peel, and coarsely grate them. Put them in a colander and press out most of the liquid. All this takes a while, and you'll be happy to have it over with. Also, go ahead and put the raisins in water so they'll be plumped when you need them later.

Another thing you'll need to do is clarify your butter. There's two ways you can go about this. After melting the butter in a sauce pan, you can either pour it through a fine sieve or just scoop out the white, foamy stuff with a spoon. The latter method won't purify the butter as well, but it's good enough for this recipe. Clarifying butter, purifies it so it can cook at higher temperatures without burning.

Next, we combine our flour, butter, egg, and water in a bowl

and stir until it forms a sticky dough.

For the dough-stretching process, you'll need a large surface to work with. On top of that, you'll need a cloth to cover it and flour sprinkled over that. I just used a bed sheet and it worked well.

Turn your dough out onto your work surface and knead it for about 10 min. The stickiness will go away as it collects more flour.

The idea to stretching the dough is to use the backs of your hands. If you try pinching it between your fingers it's going to tear a lot. Be slow, be gentle, be patient. If you have small tears, it's not a big deal. Once it's all rolled up, you won't notice them. Now, my first attempt wasn't too bad. I had it stretched out thinner and larger than what you see below. I had a few small tears, but then  I got in a hurry and I didn't realize it was stuck to my hand and I accidentally folded it over. By then, it was so thin, that I couldn't pull it apart without making huge tears. So, my second attempt was rushed, and I had to roll out the thicker parts. It still turned out pretty good in the end. Oh yeah, make sure you trim off the thick edges with a knife.

After that, melt a little shortening in a pan and use a brush to lightly coat the stretched dough. Next, apply your cinnamon, sugar, bread crumbs, walnuts, grated apples, raisins and cherries along with some of the cherry syrup (in that order). Should look something like this:

Now, roll it up and close up the ends.

Grease and dust a baking pan with flour. Cut the strudel to fit the pan. And brush your strudel with the clarified butter. And place it in the oven at 400 degrees.

Part way through baking, you'll want to turn the pan so it all heats evenly. Apply another brushing of butter at this point. Also, after 15 min. you'll want to reduce the heat to 350. Continue baking until the strudel is golden brown. Finally, throw some powdered sugar on it and it's done.

These wonderful pictures were made possible by the digital camera of Ms. Rose Parmeter. She's fucking awesome.