Hand-stretched Apple Strudel

Typical for strudel dough is an easy production. With the addition of oil and an intensive kneading allows the dough to be stretched out very thin.When you think about Viennese pastries, Viennese apple strudel always comes to mind. This pastry is one of the so-called “stretched” strudels, which means that the dough is stretched extremely thin by carefully pulling it with floured hands and then filled with different fillings.

Strudel dough consists of:

  • Flour
    Wheat flour Type 480-550 is a requirement so that you can stretch the dough thin.
  • Water
    Water is traditionally used for the strudel dough and is not usually substituted for other liquids. 
  • Oil
    It is added so that the dough has the suppleness it needs to be able to roll it out very thinly and stretch it. Flavor neutral oil is used, such as sunflower oil or rapeseed oil
  • Salt
    It gives the dough some taste

Recipe

For 1 sheet of strudel dough

Dough:

  • 500g Wheat flour Type 480
  • 250g Water 20°C
  •  125g Sunflower oil
  •      5g Salt

Apple filling:

  • 1500g Thinly sliced apples
  •   100g Granulated sugar
  •     80g Cake crumbs
  •    100g Cream (beat the cream and sugar)
  •   50g Melted butter for brushing
  •           Cinnamon

Knead a semi-soft dough out of the ingredients (5 minutes slowly and 3-4 minutes quickly). After kneading, portion the dough into 3 equal pieces, work into rounds and coat the surface with oil.

Cover the dough pieces and place in the refrigerator for at least 60 minutes to rest and until ready to use. 

After resting, the dough is rolled out on a floured cloth and then pulled out as thin as possible. When stretching it out, you reach under the dough with the back of your floured hand, always pulling carefully from the middle of the dough towards the edge of the table until the dough has become paper-thin (cut away thick edges of the dough).

Divide the apples, cake crumbs, cinnamon and whipped cream with sugar on 2/3 of the strudel dough. Now the cloth is rolled up from the covered strudel side to the uncovered dough side and placed on a lightly oiled baking sheet with the dough seam facing down.

Before baking, brush the dough with melted butter and then bake at 180°C / 45 minutes. After half of the baking time the strudel is once again brushed with melted butter.