Apple Strudels
Roll out a piece of egg pastry until it is large enough to cover a pie tin, but only half as thick as flaky pie crust. Cover it nearly to the edge with sour apples sliced very thin and seasoned to taste with sugar and ground cinnamon. Roll up like a roly poly, pinch the edges securely together, lay upon a greased pan, and bake half an hour, or until cooked. Serve warm. Strudels may be made in a similar manner of other fruit.
This is an Americanized strudel: a rolled pastry log rather than the stretched, paper-thin Viennese dough. The recipe assumes you already have egg pastry made, and gives no quantities, so a few decisions are left to you.
- Egg pastryA short crust enriched with a beaten egg (or yolk) in place of some of the water, which makes it stronger and more elastic so it can be rolled thinner without tearing. Enough for a single 9-inch crust is the right quantity here. Rest it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes before rolling; the gluten developed by rolling thin needs relaxing.
- "Half as thick as flaky pie crust"An ordinary rolled crust runs about 1/8 inch, so this wants roughly 1/16 inch, rolled to a sheet about the size of a pie tin as the recipe says. Do not try to stretch it to true strudel thinness — egg pastry will not take it, and this dough is not meant to.
- Sour applesPeriod recipes mean firm, tart cooking apples: Greenings, Baldwins, Northern Spy. Granny Smith is the reliable modern stand-in. Softer dessert varieties are more likely to cook down and leave the roll wet.
- Quantities to fill inThree medium apples sliced no thicker than 1/8 inch, tossed with 1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar and a teaspoon of cinnamon, will fill this pastry. A tablespoon of flour or fine breadcrumbs scattered on the dough first will absorb the juice the sugar draws out.
- Roll and seal at the last minuteThis is the hinge. Sugar starts pulling liquid from the apples within minutes; if the filled sheet sits, the juice softens the dough and the seam bursts in the oven. Fill, roll, pinch, and get it into the oven promptly, seam side down.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Bake at 400F for the first 15 minutes to set the pastry, then 375F for the remainder — the stated half hour is about right, and it is done when the crust is well browned and juice bubbles at the ends.
- VentingSlash the top diagonally three or four times before baking. A sealed roll of hot fruit builds steam and will split where you did not want it to.
- Yield and servingOne roll serves four to six, cut on the diagonal. Serve warm as directed, with cream or a hard sauce; reheat leftovers in a 325F oven rather than a microwave, which turns the crust limp.
Strudel is German for a whirlpool or eddy, a name that describes the spiral of dough and filling in cross-section. The dish is Austrian and Hungarian by reputation, and the technique of stretching dough until it is translucent is generally traced back through the Ottoman world to the layered pastries of the eastern Mediterranean. What appears here is what happened to strudel when it crossed into the American home kitchen: the stretched dough, which needs a floured cloth and a long table, has been replaced by an egg-enriched pie crust rolled with a pin, and the pastry is compared to a roly-poly. The closing line — that other fruit will do as well — shows how thoroughly the dish had been absorbed as a general method rather than a specific pastry.