Austrian Apple Strudel

This month lovely Lea from Austria showed us how to prepare Apple strudel, including making the dough. As she mentioned, she made the Vienna Cafe version with crispy crust and lots of fillings.

Dough:
250 gram white pastry flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp oil (neutral-taste - NO olive oil)
about 150ml lukewarm water (eventually more)

Put the flour on a kitchen surface, sprinkle salt on top of flour and mix it with your fingers. Build a crater out of the flour and put the oil in the crater. Mix it. Build a crater again and add about 1/3 of the water. Mix it. Add more water and mix it, knead the dough, add the rest of the water until the dough is kind of sticky (dough would stick to your fingers). Knead the dough with your palms until it has a smooth, soft and silky texture. Throw the dough-ball onto the kitchen surface for a couple of minutes until the surface of the dough is really silky. Form a nice round ball, spread oil on the dough and put a bowl over it. Let it rest in the warm kitchen for at least 30 minutes. The longer the dough can rest, the better. About 2h is perfect.

Meanwhile prepare the filling.

Filling:
100 gram butter
100 gram bread crumbs (plain!)
3 1/2 lb. apples (baking apples - sour, if the apples are not sour enough just add juice of one lemon)
100 gram sugar
cinnamon as desired
50 gram raisins
50 gram butter melted

Peel the apples, cut in half, remove the core and cut the apples in little apple pieces (I cut one half apple in 3 slices and then cut about 2 millimetre thick pieces out of the slices), add lemon juice if needed. Roast the bread crumbs in the butter. Melt the 50 gram butter for later.

The filling

THEN you need to stretch the dough:

Put a tablecloth (cotton in the best material) on your table and sprinkle it with flour. Take your dough and make sure it is soft and oily on the surface. Start thinning the dough with the back of your hands (take rings and watch of before). Once the dough is about as big as a table put in on the tablecloth, put your hands between the dough and the tablecloth and stretch the dough, beginning in the center, carefully with your hands. The dough will get huge and it is supposed to be as thin that you can put a newspaper underneath and be able to read it (if it's not as thin the first couple of times you make it, don't worry :-)). Cut the thinker edges of the dough if you don't like eating them.
In the end the dough should have a rectangle shape.

Dough ready to get stretched

Can you see how thin and transparent the dough is?

Now the dough is ready for the filling:

Spread the melted butter on top of the dough (everywhere). On one half of the dough put the filling, start with the breadcrumbs, then add the apple pieces, then all other ingredients.

Roll the strudel with the tablecloth. Begin with the part where the filling is on top. You can fold the edges to ,,close'' the sides of the strudel before you roll it, but this is not a must.

Put the strudel on a backing sheet (parchment paper!) and spread melted butter on top.

Bake it at about 375 degree Fahrenheit for about 30-40 minutes.

Enjoy!

Covering the dough with melted butter

Adding the filing

Strudel fresh from the oven

You can fill the strudel with sweet or savory fillings (just google a little bit). Here are some ideas:
Sweet: cherries, rhubarb, poppy seed and apples
Savory: potatoes, squash, ground meat, mixed vegetables