Passport & Plate - Heritage Apple Strudel
Czech Republic | Wednesday, March 12, 2014 | 
flickr photos
Ingredients
Pastry:
1 cup flour sifted plus 1/2 cup flour sifted
3 tbls coarsely chopped butter
3 tbls sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1 egg
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
5-7 tbls water
Filling:
4-6 medium apples
Sugar
Cinnamon
Raisins
1/2 cup Melted butter
Thin slices butter
How to prepare this recipePut first 4 ingredients into a food processor and pulse until blended. Put into bowl. Whisk 1 egg and add to mixture. Add water and apple cider vinegar. Mix ingredients with fingers. If dough is too wet and sticky sift 1/2 cup of lour on top of dough and mix with fingers until dough is not sticky and stop. There will still be flour in bowl. Form dough into ball, put into bowl, cover and allow to rest in warm area.
Meanwhile slice thin 4-6 medium sized apples. Melt 1 stick of butter. Prepare your table with a white sheet or clean tablecloth. Cover a large area with sifted flour and put all of dough on it. Gently start rolling dough like pie crust and then stretch dough. Alternate rolling and stretching until dough is so thin it becomes translucent but before holes form.
Generously spread melted butter on the dough. Then spread sugar on the melted butter. Not heavily but don't be too stingy either.
Add apples to the top of the sugar. Sprinkle apples with cinnamon and sugar and thin slices of butter.
Starting at one side roll everything like a big jelly roll . Put it into a 9X13 greased pan. Seal the ends. Baste with some butter and bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes
Baste with some melted butter and juices from the strudel when finished baking.
The story behind this recipeApple Strudel - Evolution of a Recipe
My Czech grandmother woke one morning to find my grandfather, who suffered from dementia, filling her recipe box with water. She save a few recipes that family members had given her but most of our food heritage was gone.
The recipe of hers that I wanted the most was her recipe for Apple Strudel. She had only made it once for me and I have wonderful memories of her rolling out the beautiful dough on her red and white table cloth which was laid over the large pine table my grandfather had made. Though I begged her she refused to make it again saying it was "too hard."
After my grandmother died I found among her belongings a book published in 1915 called “Bohemian American Cook Book” by Mary Rosicky. And on page 198 there was an apple strudel recipe with four words written next to it in my grandmother’s handwriting. “Make half of recipe”
I got the ingredients together and . . . It was a bust. The amount of liquid for the full recipe was ¾ cup of water and that was to go with a cup of flour sifted. Way too much water. After adding the called for egg and 1 tablespoon of melted butter I had a mushy mess. I added more sifted flour and the pastry after cooking was tough and tasteless.
But the filling reminded me of my grandmother’s apple roll recipe which I realized was just a simple strudel recipe using a pie crust. `
PIE CRUST! All of a sudden the recipe fell into place. My other grandmother made a wonderful pie crust. She used butter, a small amount of water, cider vinegar, sugar and salt with the flour.
So I did also. The dough was light and stretched reasonably well. I did not end up with my grandmother’s Apple Strudel recipe. but I ended up with something that made me just as happy. When we sit down at the pine table (that I inherited) for a bite of apple strudel I feel the love and hear the laughter of these two women. And I am more than satisfied.
