Apfelstrudel

Vienna's pastry stretched by hand until a newspaper can be read through it, rolled round tart apples, cinnamon, raisins and buttered crumbs

Origin: Vienna, Graz & Austria

From the journey of Apple.

Strudel is German for a whirlpool or an eddy, and the name describes the spiral a slice shows when it is cut. The dough is the whole discipline: a lean mixture of strong flour, water, oil, and a little vinegar, rested warm and then stretched by hand over a floured cloth until it covers a table and is thin enough that, by the rule every Austrian cook is taught, a newspaper laid underneath can be read through it. The technique is not originally Austrian. Paper-thin stretched dough is the same idea as Ottoman yufka and the filo of the eastern Mediterranean, and the generally accepted account has it arriving in the Habsburg lands through Hungary and the long Ottoman frontier rather than being invented in Vienna. What Vienna did was marry it to the apple and to a filling of butter, sugar, cinnamon, and rum-soaked raisins, and to make it the fixed accompaniment to an afternoon coffee. The oldest surviving strudel recipe is a handwritten one for a Milchrahmstrudel, a cream strudel rather than an apple one, dated 1696 and held in the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus. The buttered breadcrumbs are the technical key and the step most often skipped. Fresh crumbs are fried in butter until golden and scattered over the dough before the apples go on, where they absorb the juice the fruit releases and keep it from soaking through and tearing the pastry. Without them the base of the roll goes to paste. The apples must be tart and firm. Austria grows the large majority of its crop in Styria, where the Steirischer Apfel carries a European protected geographical indication and the orchards run along a signposted road through the hills south-east of Graz; the varieties grown for cooking hold their shape and bring the acidity that the sugar and cinnamon are balanced against. A sweet eating apple collapses into sauce and makes the whole thing cloying.

Ingredients

Dough

250 g strong white flour
1 egg
125 ml warm water
3 tbsp sunflower oil, plus more for resting
1 tsp white wine vinegar
0.5 tsp salt

Filling

1 kg tart firm apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced
100 g caster sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 lemon, zested and juiced
80 g raisins
3 tbsp dark rum
60 g walnuts, roughly chopped

Crumbs

100 g fresh white breadcrumbs

To assemble

120 g butter, melted, plus 40g for the crumbs

To finish

2 tbsp icing sugar, to dust

To serve

300 ml vanilla sauce or whipped cream, to serve

Method

Soak the raisins in the rum while you make the dough.
Work the flour, egg, warm water, oil, vinegar, and salt into a soft dough, then knead it hard for ten minutes until it is smooth and genuinely elastic.
Knead it far longer than seems necessary. The dough has to stretch to the size of a table without tearing, and every minute of kneading is gluten you will need later.
Shape it into a ball, brush it all over with oil, cover it with a warmed bowl, and rest it somewhere warm for an hour. A cold dough will not stretch.
Fry the breadcrumbs in the 40g of butter over a medium heat until golden and sandy, then set them aside.
Toss the sliced apples with the sugar, cinnamon, lemon zest and juice, the drained raisins, and the walnuts, and leave them for ten minutes.
Spread a large clean cloth over a table and flour it well. Roll the dough out on it as far as the pin will go.
Now put the backs of your floured hands underneath and stretch it outwards from the centre, working around the table, until it is a thin rectangle about 60cm by 80cm.
Work with the backs of the hands and never the fingertips, which puncture it. Stretch until you can read print through the middle; the thick border can be trimmed off at the end.
Brush the whole sheet with melted butter, then scatter the fried crumbs over the lower third, leaving a clear border of about 5cm all round.
Pile the apples over the crumbs, fold the two side borders inwards over the filling, then lift the near edge of the cloth and let the strudel roll itself away from you into a long tight cylinder.
Slide it seam side down onto a lined tray, curving it if it is too long, brush it with butter, and bake at 190°C for forty to forty-five minutes, basting with butter twice, until deep gold. Dust with icing sugar and serve warm.

Notes

Knead hard and rest the dough warm and oiled; both are what make it stretchable. Stretch with the backs of the hands. The buttered breadcrumbs are not optional: they absorb the apple juice and are the difference between a crisp base and a wet one. Use tart firm apples and slice them thinly rather than chunking them. Roll it with the cloth rather than with your hands. It is best warm and within a few hours; a day-old strudel is revived in a hot oven for five minutes and never in a microwave, which turns the pastry to leather. Bought filo makes a respectable strudel and Austrians will know.

The Gastrographer

Name: Apfelstrudel
Prep time: 1 h 40 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 2 h 25 min
Yield: 8
Cuisine: Graz & Austria
Ingredients: 250 g strong white flour; 1 egg; 125 ml warm water; 3 tbsp sunflower oil, plus more for resting; 1 tsp white wine vinegar; 0.5 tsp salt; 1 kg tart firm apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced; 100 g caster sugar; 2 tsp ground cinnamon; 1 lemon, zested and juiced; 80 g raisins; 3 tbsp dark rum; 60 g walnuts, roughly chopped; 100 g fresh white breadcrumbs; 120 g butter, melted, plus 40g for the crumbs; 2 tbsp icing sugar, to dust; 300 ml vanilla sauce or whipped cream, to serve

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control