For everyone who loves gourmet pastries with lots of toppings, as well as German and traditional European cuisine, we offer our recipe today. The dough for strudel, namely, we will prepare them, should be elastic, supple and very thinly rolled. There are many options for fillers, as well as some features in the preparation of the dough. Learn about everything in this article.
Puff pastry fruit and apple strudel
Any fruit is well combined with apples in strudel, but best of all are orchards. In our case, consider the preparation of strudel from puff pastry with apples, pears and quinces. To prepare the dish you will need the following ingredients:
- butter - 140 g;
- premium sifted wheat flour - 30 g;
- very thin filo puff pastry - 6 sheets;
- garden fruits (apples, pears, quinces or others) - 800 g;
- icing sugar - 125 g;
- blanched almonds, peeled - 100 g;
- apple brandy "Calvados" (you can replace whiskey with dark rum);
- perfect egg - 1 piece;
- lemon - 1 piece;
- a mixture of spicy spices for baking - 100 g;
- plums - 100 g.
In this recipe we will use ready-made very thin filo dough. Strudel with apples should have a very thin shell. Some housewives do not bake the presented dish precisely because they are afraid to thinly roll the dough and do not risk working with this material. There is nothing to worry about in this procedure, because the dough does not tear, and, despite its apparent fragility, it is quite flexible and supple.
Cooking process
Cut the butter into small cubes (2 cm wide). Let the product soften at room temperature. You can already turn on the oven and start heating it up to 180 degrees. Immediately take a baking sheet, grease it with oil and line it with parchment paper. Grind the cooked almonds in a food processor, if there is no such device, you can use the chopper nozzles in a blender. This recipe for puff pastry strudel suggests using nuts that are ground into powder.
Original dressing
Have you forgotten about the chopped butter? It seems it's time to use this ingredient as well. We place the softened pieces in a food processor and beat thoroughly until the air mass. Then break the egg into butter and mix until whipping. We send flour, powdered almonds and lemon zest there, and now we thoroughly beat all the components in the combine. Tip: Remove the zest from an unpeeled whole lemon with a fine grater. Our ready-made dressing will go into the dough for apple strudel a little later, but for now it can be put aside.
Let's have some fruit
It's time to make fruit filler for our sweet pastries. We thoroughly wash apples, pears, quinces and plums (if you have other fruits, do not worry), remove seeds and seeds, where possible, clean the peel. Now we cut all the components into small slices and place in a separate bowl, sprinkle with spices for sweet pastries, squeeze the juice from the lemon, from which the zest was removed a few minutes earlier, pour a small portion of Calvados (whiskey or rum), then mix. The filler should be a little infused, so we move it aside.
Filo dough: recipes. Garden fruit strudel forming process
Now we need to melt over low heat in a small saucepan 15 grams of butter. We lay a clean waffle towel on the table, on top we put one sheet of thin puff pastry. Take a cooking brush and grease the opposite long edge of the dough lying on the towel. The next layer will be placed next to the plastered edge with a protrusion of approximately 2 cm. This distance will be enough for us to press the edges of the sheets together and glue them together. We reveal two glued sheets and grease the entire surface with one third of the entire almond dressing. The puff pastry strudel recipe recommends six sheets of filo for use. After we repeat the process of gluing two more pairs of sheets, we will end up with 3 large surfaces, unfolded like album sheets, superimposed and greased with nut impregnation.
On the final layer of dough, smeared with almond sauce, spread the infused fruit. Cover the surface of the layer evenly, but in such a way that a protrusion of 2 cm is formed from all edges.
Do not forget to gently grease the edges with melted butter. Attention! Now comes the crucial moment. We will roll the impregnated plates with the filling, starting from the opposite edge. Gently, but not too tightly wrap the strudel in the roll towards you. We shift the workpiece onto a baking sheet, and once again we coat the top with oil. Sent in the oven for 30 minutes. As you can see, making strudel from puff pastry is not so difficult as it might seem at first glance. The finished dish is cut into portions (in our case there will be 8) and served to the table with the heat of the heat, complementing the dessert with a ball of cream ice cream. Incredible combination!
Recipe for cherry dough strudel
Of course, you can use meat ingredients as a filling for strudel, but this dish is most appreciated as a dessert with fruit or apple fillings. Now we will try to cook an extract dough for strudel, and then fill it with cherry. As ingredients for the dough we need:
- premium wheat flour - 250 g;
- water - 150 g;
- salt - one pinch;
- vegetable oil - 2 tbsp. spoons.
We immediately divide the flour into 2 parts, 200 grams of which will go, in fact, to the dough, and we will use the remaining 50 grams for rolling.
For the filling, take:
- pitted cherries - 800 g;
- walnuts (almonds) - 50 g;
- granulated sugar - 300 g;
- friable shortbread biscuits (ground crackers) - 50 g;
- butter for spreading dough surface - 100 g.
If you do not want to use cookies, you can replace this ingredient with another 50 grams of nuts.
How to make strudel dough? Step-by-step instruction
Sift the flour into a round deep bowl with a pinch of salt. We will use warm water for the test, we will pour it into the flour, then add 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil. All well knead and knead uncooked, even slightly sticky dough to the hands. Do not be afraid that the dough is sticky - it should be so. We do not add the rest of the flour, and for further mixing, grease the palms with vegetable oil. You can mash the lump manually, or you can use a bread machine.
The strudel dough, the recipe of which we cover, is kneaded in a bread machine in the Pelmeni or Pizza modes for 10 minutes. When a good lump is formed, pack it in cellophane, wrap it in a towel and leave it at room temperature for another 1 hour. During this time, gluten will have time to swell, and later on when working with the material you will not experience any inconvenience. What further does our recipe say? The dough for exhaust strudel should be warm for a long time. This is a very important rule, and if you do not observe it, then when rolling out, the base layer will tear.
Process the cherry
We have not yet considered what kind of cherry can be used for cooking. In fact, both fresh and frozen will do. The main thing is that the berries are already seedless. We shift the ingredient into the pan, pour a glass of sugar and mix. Then we will need to make cherry syrup, for this we will bring the berries to a boil over low heat. Stir occasionally, cook no more than 5 minutes, because we do not need jam. Let the berries in the syrup cool, and then put them in a colander. Next, we need only berries, but the syrup can be used for other purposes, for example, for jelly.
Grind nuts and cookies
Raw nuts for filling will not work, so let’s bake them in a pan over low heat for 7 minutes. Do not forget to stir the ingredient. After the roasted almonds have cooled, grind the mass with a blender. We will do the same procedure with shortbread cookies, after crushing it into pieces. Now mix both components in a separate bowl.
Pull the dough
In order to get a quality dough for strudel (the recipe of which we are currently studying), we will use a cotton towel. We spread the towel on the table and sprinkle the surface with flour well, spread the dough on top, then sprinkle the flour again. Roll the base directly onto a towel in a regular layer. The base is not yet thin, but we remember that for this German dish the dough should be the thinnest. What does the recipe advise on this? The dough for strudel must be pulled out with your hands in a circle, lifting the edges with the back of your hands. After all, this is the only way to protect the formation from discontinuities. We will carry out the pulling procedure until the towel pattern clearly looks through the layer.
Some guidelines for pulling
This recipe (dough for strudel) is simple to implement, for some housewives stretching the dough is seen as a rather fascinating process. The main thing is to act carefully, and if a small hole is formed when pulling, it can be sealed by tearing a small part from the edge of the formation.
In the event that the formation is formed too holey, all the flaws in the finished dish will disappear during folding. But re-rolling the dough for strudel (the recipe is given in the article) is not recommended. Otherwise, the material will lose its elasticity, and the dish will not work at all.
Final stage
The thick edges of the rolled seam are removed using a pizza knife or scissors. Then grease the surface with melted butter and spread a mixture of ground nuts and cookies. Sprinkle the ingredients so that there is a protrusion of 4 cm from all edges of the formation, and on the one hand leave about 10 cm for the last turn. Before forming the roll, it remains to evenly distribute the berries on the surface of the formation. Sprinkle everything with the rest (half a cup) of sugar. When twisting, you can help yourself with a towel. Lubricate the top with melted butter and spread on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Send to the preheated oven for half an hour. Sprinkle the finished strudel with powdered sugar and cut it into portions while still hot.
Enjoy your meal!