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Apple Roll
Sift one pint of flour into a bowl, make a hole in the center of the flour, and pour in gradually one cup of lukewarm water, a pinch of salt and a tablespoon of butter. Stir this slowly, making a smooth dough of it and adding a little more flour if necessary. Cover the dough, and set it in a warm place until you have pared half a peck of apples, and cut them very fine in this way: Pare, quarter, and take out the cores and seeds, and cut them very fine. Now cover the table with a clean cloth, sift flour all over it, and roll out the dough as thin as possible. Put your hands under the rolled dough, and stretch it gently so as to not tear it, walking all around the table as you do this to get it even and as thin as tissue paper. Pour a few tablespoons of melted butter over the dough; then the apples, brown sugar, cinnamon and raisins. Now take hold of the tablecloth with both hands about a yard apart, and begin to roll the dough, it will almost roll itself if the cloth is lifted high enough. Butter a large cake pan, hold it against the edge of the table, and roll the dough into it. Bake an even brown, basting often with butter.
This is a hand-stretched strudel dough under another name, and the original assumes you know the quantities for the filling and the heat of your own oven. A few numbers make it workable.
- The dough must rest before stretchingThe "warm place" rest is not for leavening — there is no yeast here — but to relax the gluten so the dough will stretch to tissue thinness without tearing. The recipe times it by how long it takes to pare the apples; half an hour to an hour is a reasonable modern equivalent. Under-resting is a common cause of dough that springs back and rips.
- A pint of flourMeasured by volume, that is 2 cups, roughly 9 ounces. A full cup of lukewarm water against that would be very slack by modern bread standards, but the recipe pours the water in gradually and tells you to add "a little more flour if necessary" — aim for a soft, slack dough rather than a stiff one, since a slack dough stretches and a stiff one fights you.
- Half a peck of applesA peck is 10 to 12 lb, so half a peck is 5 to 6 lb of whole apples, yielding something like 4 to 5 lb pared and sliced. That is a great deal of filling — enough for two long rolls in most home kitchens. Halving it is reasonable.
- Sugar, cinnamon and raisins are unmeasuredFor 5 lb of pared apples, figure about 1 to 1 1/2 cups brown sugar, 2 teaspoons cinnamon and a cup of raisins, adjusted to the tartness of the fruit. Firm baking apples hold their shape; a soft eating apple will collapse into sauce inside the roll.
- No oven temperature is givenStrudel wants a fairly brisk oven: 400F for the first 15 to 20 minutes to set and colour the pastry, then 375F for another 25 to 30 minutes until the apples are tender when a skewer goes through. "Bake an even brown" is the only doneness cue the author offers, and it is a good one.
- Basting with butterThis is what turns the layers crisp and flaky rather than papery. Brush melted butter over the roll before it goes in and again two or three times during baking; do not let it pool in the pan.
- The tablecloth technique worksUse a smooth, well-floured cloth (a cotton sheet or plain tablecloth, not terry). Leave a bare border of dough along the far edge so the seam has something to seal against, and roll away from you by lifting the cloth rather than pushing the dough.
- YieldA full batch as written fills the "large cake pan" the recipe calls for and serves 10 to 12, cut in thick diagonal slices. Best eaten the day it is baked, while the pastry is still crisp.
Under a plain English title, this is Central European apple strudel, and the tablecloth method described here — stretching the dough over a floured cloth until it is "as thin as tissue paper," then using the cloth itself to roll it up — is the traditional Austrian and Hungarian technique. The dough is a lean flour-water-fat paste with no leavening and no eggs, which is why it is the fat brushed between and over the layers, not any raising agent, that gives the finished roll its flakiness. Half a peck of apples was an ordinary household quantity in a period when fruit came in by the barrel in autumn and had to be used before it spoiled.