A thousand and one recipes for apple strudel. Here’s how our pastry chefs make it.
Apple strudel has as many levels of taste – there are various types of dough, apples varieties, fillings, and wrapping techniques, from stretched and leavened, to rolled or steamed strudel. We sat down with our pastry chefs, who revealed step by step the secret to the famous combination of fruit, breadcrumbs, nuts – and, of course, buttery puff pastry.
Here’s everything you need to know:
1. Step number one: a good puff pastry. You have two choices – either let the confectioners give you a helping hand, or if you want to make your own, follow the recipe from Eska, or the one from Myšák below, where a fat cube made of butter and flour is kneaded into a mixture of flour, water, vinegar, butter and salt, as well as egg yolks and cream. The dough becomes gradually softer as it is worked through.
Puff pastry according to Myšák
For the fat cube:
- 500 g of butter
- 225 g plain flour
For the dough (turnip):
- 500g plain flour
- 10g salt
- 10g spirit vinegar
- 70g butter, cold and cubed
- 85ml of water
- 160g of whipped cream (cream and egg yolks in a 1:1 ratio)
Instructions:
- For the fat cube, combine the butter cubes with the flour, ideally in a food processor. Between 2 sheets of baking papers, roll the mixture into a rectangle about 2 cm thick and place in the fridge.
- Combine the remaining ingredients in a bowl, mixing for about 5 minutes, so that a smooth dough is formed. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate.
- Roll out the chilled dough in the shape of a cross, and place the hardened fat cube in the middle. Wrap the fat cube, and roll out an oblong rectangle.
- Fold three times and roll again into a rectangle. Repeat the process twice more. Finally, fold the dough four times.
Some tips:
Pay attention to the temperature! The fat cube mustn’t dissolve or crumble – butter that is too soft won’t form the correct sheeting, while a hard cube causes the dough to crack, meaning it won’t roll evenly and may leak during baking.
The dough mixture needs time to rest in the fridge, and should be cold before folding – a warm dough is sticky and speeds up the softening of the butter, causing it to not combine properly with the rest of the ingredients.
The vinegar in the recipe prevents the butter from being absorbed into the water, helping form good layers in the dough. Don’t overdo it with the vinegar though – the baked pastry could tear.
2. Once you have the filling ready, take the chilled puff pastry out of the fridge, and work quickly – it should be pliable and cold so it doesn't melt under your hands.
3. This is an important one! Before adding the apples, dust the rolled dough with a dry filling, for example breadcrumbs. This helps absorb moisture from the fruit, preventing the dough from going soggy, and at the same time strengthens the edges, making the baked strudel easier to cut. Use more if you’re using juicer fruit, or gently coat apple pieces in it.
The classic breadcrumbs can be replaced by grated gingerbread, crushed biscuits and amaretti cookies, ground walnuts or toasted desiccated coconut. Crumbs made from buttered brioche or old Christmas cookies are also excellent. Saute with spices and sugar, or fry in brown butter with a little sugar and leave to cool.
In Myšák, they grate their own rum gingerbread cookies onto the rolled dough, using up those which break during production and can’t be sold. At Café Savoy, they mix breadcrumbs with cinnamon and cane sugar.
A journey through time
A relative of filo pastry, stretched dough for strudel is thought to be from East Asia. Strudel probably arrived in Europe with the Turks during their military campaigns – through the Balkans and Hungary, it made its way to the Habsburg Monarchy and to Vienna, where they began to fill and roll it as we still do today. The name “strudel” translates as "whirlpool", and refers to the baking process.
The oldest preserved, handwritten recipe for Mülch Raimb Strudl dates back to 1696. Over time, countless recipes for sweet and savoury strudels were born in Austro-Hungarian cuisine, and strudel dough was also a popular
addition to soups. Yet the star remains the Viennese apple strudel – a legend of aristocratic salons, which gradually settled in country kitchens as well.
4. The taste of apple strudel is determined by apples – how else?!. Pastry chefs choose fresh fruit that is aromatic and pleasantly sour. It’s the acidity that gives the strudel a balanced and much more interesting taste – as a result, sweeter apples are usually acidified with lemon juice or zest before use
Bakeries use well-known commercial varieties such as Granny Smith, Green Delicious or Ligol, but so-called strudel or cooking apples – larger, sour and less juicy varieties with firm flesh – are beloved, as they release less juice and retain their structure.
Among the typical strudel apples are Striped Cardinal (Kardinál žihaný), Boiko's huge or Libernáč Slupenský and Vinický apples, or smaller Boskopská apples. Unripe fruits are preferred for their balanced, sweet and sour tones.
5. Apples need time to prepare! Most bakers peel them, cut them into slices, wedges or cubes and leave them to sit for 30 minutes to an hour to release their juice. Then they are lightly squeezed and combined with other ingredients.
The more water that remains in the apple, the more steam will be created during baking – and the greater the risk that the steam will tear the dough. For that reason, the fruit must be left to sit – a process which is repeated with curd, too.
Tip: Few professionals choose to finely grate the apples for a strudel – and if this is the case, the fruit is grated into a colander, allowing excess water to be removed.
The peeled apple skins aren’t wasted – they serve as the starting ingredient for the production of vinegar, are mixed into salads and into the dough for cakes and muffins, or they can be dried and used for tea, chips, granola or dust to sweeten or decorate desserts.
6. When it comes to the filling, respect for tradition prevails – apples are paired with raisins and walnuts, which are dry-roasted, chopped, ground or boiled. This gives them a more pronounced taste, and at the same time they soften, so they do not break the dough, and the strudel is easier to cut and serve.
At Café Savoy, tart apples are complemented by raisins that have been soaked in rum for two days, and caramelised walnuts. Confectioners from Myšák also put their faith in walnuts in caramel. At Eska, they put apples or pears on the dough with cinnamon, cane sugar, raisins in rum and roasted nuts.
Notes from the bakery:
Instead of raisins, dip prunes, sour cherries or cruciferous cherries in the rum – all will enhance the flavour of the apples. Walnuts can be swapped for hazelnuts, pecans or almonds – or for a change, mix the apples withdried apple rings which have been soaked in apple liquor.
You can first caramelise the apples in cane and vanilla sugar, then adding raisins, nuts and cinnamon right in the pan. A drop of apple cider vinegar gives the cooled mixture an excellent flavour, too.
Spices for strudel are worth buying in organic quality, and grinding freshly just before baking for a beautiful aroma. Experiment with the taste difference between true Ceylon cinnamon and the more common Chinese cassia cinnamon – the former has an intense aroma and sweet taste, the latter is less aromatic, earthy and more pungent.
Gingerbread spices – star anise, allspice, anise, cardamom, coriander and fennel, ground cinnamon and cloves – complete the strudel filling. For a final touch, sprinkle a pinch of nutmeg or ginger, or vanilla in the form of vanilla sugar .
7. Before baking, the wrapped strudel is scored or cut diagonally along its entire length. This helps the aforementioned steam escape, preventing it from creating holes in the dough. If the accumulated juice has nowhere to evaporate, it flows onto the baking sheet, caramelises and burns under the strudel.
8. To brush or not to brush? The ultimate question – and it depends on the dough and the pastry chef! Pulled or stretched strudel is usually brushed with melted butter, which is missing from the basic dough, both when wrapping and just before baking. Puff pastry contains a lot of fat, but at Eska, for example, it is still greased with clarified butter before and after taking it out of the oven – for the aroma, taste and added crunch.
From practice:
Strudel brushed with egg alone usually turns very dark, so confectioners prefer to beat yolks (or whole eggs) with milk or cream. This will turn the dessert into a golden beauty. But be careful – in the case of puff pastry, there’s a risk that the egg will prevent a nice flaked pastry once baked.
In some kitchens, the strudel is drizzled with slightly warmed honey or sprinkled with sugar towards the end of baking, caramelising the surface.
In older cookbooks, stretched dough strudels were also topped with hot milk, cream or butter during baking. Once filled, the strudel was greased with butter and drizzled with milk or sour cream in the oven.
9. Baked strudel deserves more than just a dusting of vanilla sugar. Serve it cooled, or still warm from the oven, with whipped cream and warm custard, vanilla ice cream or even rum foam. The strudel moves up a culinary bar when accompanied by vanilla sauces such as crème anglaise or zabaione.
The concept of strudel can also be transferred to other desserts. In restaurants, it is broken up into crispy pieces or puff pastry chips, served with apple ragú or caramelised apples, ice cream and apple mousse, or with applesauce: fruit is baked in the oven until caramelised, finished with a drop of rum, spices and a little (nut) butter.
From old recipes
Rolled strudel was made from half a kilo of flour, 70g of butter and 2 eggs, 2 yolks and salt. The stiff noodle-like dough was rolled into a thin sheet and filled with apples, sugar, cinnamon and raisins. After baking for a while, the strudel was half covered with cream, brushed with butter, sprinkled with sugar and baked again.
In our region, pork lard was also commonly used in sweet recipes . For the "Schweinfest strudel", water-based dough was combined with a fat cube of lard fresh from the slaughterhouse, and plain flour. Apples or rhubarb with cinnamon, sugar and raisins or curd, poppyseed "vomasta" or ground nuts were wrapped in the dough.
During seasonal pig slaughters, a strudel was baked with pork crackling: 400g of plain flour, 150g of sugar, 400g of freshly ground crackling, 2 egg yolks, milk and baking powder were combined into a dough, which was then rolled out until a centimetre thick. The sheet was spread with cranberry, rosehip or currant jam, rolled up, brushed with egg and baked for about half an hour in an oven heated to a medium high temperature.
Potatoes and cabbage were also baked in strudels. Boiled grated potatoes were kneaded into a mixture of egg, sugar, vanilla, lemon zest and juice, and finally whipped egg white. Raisins or dried cherries were sprinkled on top of the filling. Cabbage was stewed in butter with a pinch of salt, then stuffed into strudel together with raisins, sugar and cinnamon.
Source: confectioners Ambiente, Jiří Marhold, Marie B. Svobodová, Kulinarisches Erbe
