So That's What Strudel Is...

I thought I knew what strudel was. Really, I mean, doesn't everyone know what strudel is? Turns out I was wrong. I thought strudel was a pastry that had some jam-type filling in it and a lattice dough top...ahhh, no. We made strudel today and I can tell you that it is nothing like what I thought, not even a little.

We started by making a moist dough that kneaded for about seven minutes on the kitchen aid with a dough hook. Then we let it rest and worked on our fillings. Our group made a cheese and plum filling. The plums are really heavenly looking, smelling and tasting these days and I've been lucky to work with them twice this week; for their role in this dessert, I just washed, seeded and thinly sliced them. The cheese part of the filling was basically a mixture of farmer's cheese, cream cheese, sour cream, lemon juice, vanilla, eggs, milk-soaked bread (?) and butter beat in the kitchen aid till semi-smooth. After the dough had rested for a good long while, we clean our table and put a table cloth on top of it, floured it and set the dough in the middle. Now, you can imagine the look of shock on the faces of my fellow students and I when chef pulled out a table cloth but the logic behind its use for strudel is pretty neat. Due to the fact that the dough doesn`t stick to the table cloth, it made it a lot easier to stretch and also, when we eventually rolled the dough, the tablecloth helped us to maneuver the gigantic strudel with a little more skill.

When we began to roll out our dough, it was about two inches tall and six inches long. When we finished rolling and stretching, the strudel dough covered one-third of the table and was so thin we could have read a newspaper through it. We stretched it in pairs using the backs of our hands to lift the dough and gently pull and shake it enabling it to stretch. It was fun but a little tense because when you work with such thin doughs, the possibility of tearing is quite high. Once the strudel was stretched, we drizzled it with melted butter and bread crumbs and then placed our cheese filling at one end in three large, rectangular sections and then we topped the cheese with the plums. Then, very carefully, we used the table cloth to help us roll up the strudel. Once rolled we cut off the excess and portioned the big strudel into three smaller ones to bake.


Thinly rolled dough being filled before rolling


Rolling...


Finished product warm from the oven!

Now I can`t say that I was a big fan of the strudel. Our filling was really, really moist and that made it really hard to cut when it was so hot because the cheese and plums kind of oozed everywhere. The flavor was pretty good but for all the hassle that the dough was, I`m certainly not going to beg to make it again! However, that`s kind of a sad thing to say because strudel is not really made this way that often unless you are at an Austrian bakery and the tradition of making it in this way could easily die out in favor of methods of greater convenience.

We also made quick puff pastry today but I`m not going to tell you about it today because we are baking it into several things tomorrow and I don`t want to spoil the fun!