Apple strudel on hand-stretched dough: five ingredients and a tablecloth
Strudel dough is flour, warm water, oil, vinegar and salt. There is no butter in it and no egg; the work is done by gluten, which after forty-five minutes of rest can be stretched across a whole table until you can read the pattern of the cloth through it. Inside are apples with cinnamon and raisins on breadcrumbs browned in butter, which drink the juice so the base stays crisp.
Your own work in that: 45 min.
- Kneading 15 min
- Dough resting 45 min
- Filling 15 min
- Stretching and rolling 15 min
- Baking 40 min
- Cooling 15 min
Step by step
0 / 8 doneKnead the dough until silky
Mix the flour with the salt, add the warm water, oil and vinegar. Bring together, then work it for 10 minutes: lift the dough and slap it down hard on the counter, fold, repeat. Finished, it is smooth, glossy and completely non-sticky, like an earlobe.
Ingredients: 250 g plain flour · 130 ml water · 30 ml oil · 1 tsp cider vinegar · 1 pinch salt
TipThe vinegar slightly slackens the gluten network and the warm water speeds its formation. Together they make a dough that <b>stretches</b> instead of shrinking back and tearing.
Ten minutes of slapping, until it turns silkyRest it under a warm bowl
Shape a smooth ball, coat it with a spoon of oil and cover with a bowl that has been scalded with boiling water and wiped dry. Leave 45 minutes at room temperature.
TipThis rest is not optional. Freshly kneaded gluten is as tight as elastic; after 45 minutes in the warmth it relaxes, and only then will the dough stretch to transparency. Cold dough from the fridge will tear.
The ball under a warm bowl, three quarters of an hourPrepare the apples
Peel and core the apples and slice them 3 mm thick. Toss with the sugar, cinnamon, raisins and lemon juice. Don't do this more than a quarter of an hour before rolling: sugar draws the juice out of the fruit.
Ingredients: 1000 g tart apples · 80 g sugar · 2 tsp cinnamon · 60 g raisins · ½ pcs lemon, juice · 60 g breadcrumbs · 50 g butter · 50 g walnuts
3 mm slices, sugar, cinnamon, raisinsBrown the breadcrumbs in butter
Melt 50 g butter in a pan, add the breadcrumbs and fry over medium heat 4 minutes, stirring, until golden and smelling nutty. Leave to cool.
TipThe crumbs are not a filler but a sponge: they drink the juice the apples release in the oven. Without them the juice soaks through and the base of the strudel goes sodden.
Golden, nutty-smelling, cooledStretch the dough on a tablecloth
Heat the oven to 190 °C. Cover a large table with a cotton cloth and flour it. Roll the dough into a 30 cm disc, then slide the backs of your hands underneath (not fingers — nails go through) and stretch, moving your hands from the centre outwards, into a rectangle of 60 × 80 cm. It should be thin enough to show the weave of the cloth. Trim the thick edges.
TipStretch slowly and evenly; a sharp pull makes a hole. A small hole is no disaster — once rolled it disappears among the layers.
Backs of the hands under the dough, until the cloth shows throughFill and roll with the cloth
Brush the whole sheet with melted butter. Along one long edge, in a 20 cm band, scatter the crumbs, then the apples drained of their juice and the walnuts; leave 5 cm of bare edge. Fold the sides in and, lifting the cloth, roll the strudel into a log. Roll it off the cloth onto a paper-lined tray, seam down; the log is longer than the tray, so curve it into a horseshoe.
Ingredients: 60 g butter · 2 tbsp icing sugar
TipThe dough is far too thin to lift by hand — it would tear under its own weight. The cloth does it for you: it is the surest way to roll a strudel in one piece.
Sides in, then rolled by the clothBake and butter twice
Brush the top with butter and bake 40 minutes at 190 °C on the middle shelf. After 20 minutes brush with butter a second time: that is what gives the crisp, flaking layers. Done, it is deep gold and crackles under the knife.
Two butter brushings: at the start and halfwayCool fifteen minutes and dust
Leave 15 minutes: hot filling is liquid and runs out when cut. Dust with icing sugar and slice with a sharp knife in a sawing motion, on the diagonal, into 10 pieces. Serve warm, with whipped cream or vanilla sauce.
A quarter of an hour, icing sugar, a sawing knife
Before you start
Filo as a shortcut
Instead of stretched dough: 6 sheets of filo, each brushed with butter and stacked. It is not a Viennese strudel, but the filling and the rolling technique stay the same and it saves an hour.
Which apples
Firm and tart: Boskoop, Granny Smith, Braeburn. Avoid Bramleys, which cook down to a fluff. Dessert apples collapse into purée and release so much juice that even the crumbs cannot drink it.
The dough keeps tearing
Kneaded too briefly, or rested too briefly. A silky ball and a full 45 minutes in the warmth are the conditions; if it still tears, give it another 15 minutes under the bowl and try again.
