How to Make the Best Strudel | Bake It Up a Notch with Erin McDowell

i have a new favorite youtube comment which is somebody who said you can always tell a real baker by the way they caress their kitchenaid and i was like i definitely am always petting it [Music] hi i'm erin jean mcdowell and welcome to this episode of bake it up a notch i say something like this almost every episode but this episode is especially special to me because we are talking about one of my favorite baking projects in the whole wide world one that i don't think enough people try for themselves and one i am convinced that you can make it home way easier than you think we are going to be talking about strudel one of the reasons that strudel is so special to me is because of a family connection when i was a teenager my oldest brother matt who's a photographer he was restoring some old family photos from my mom and in those photos was a series of images of my great grandma nagy she was hungarian making strudel at a big table kind of surrounded by other people she's making a cherry strudel and my brother restored these images so that we could all kind of see how amazing it was when she would make it it was so thin stretched across the whole table and it was one of my mom's biggest regrets that she'd never learned fully how to make the strudel from grandma nagy so i started working on a recipe and now my mom and i used this recipe to make strudel together and it is so much fun in addition to my personal connection with strudel i also think it is such a great fall dessert so i really want to show you exactly how it's done we're going to go into all the equipment all the tips and tricks you're going to need and of course we're going to show where things could go wrong and if possible how to fix it if this sounds like something you're interested in or if you have loved past episodes of bake it up a notch do me a favor and please click like and subscribe so you can be made aware of every episode as they become available with that said let's get baking one of the best parts about making strudel is that it really requires very little equipment the main thing you're going to need that you don't need in a lot of other baking recipes is a tablecloth which we'll talk more about later but you're also going to need a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment this is a time that you're going to want to use the stand mixer because this gets mixed very intensely we're going to need a mixing bowl for it to kind of rest in we're going to need some spatulas we're going to need a pastry brush for later in the assembly process and we will also be needing a serrated knife when it comes time to slice our strudel all right let's start by making the strudel dough now the strudel dough requires what is known as intense mixing this is any time you're mixing a dough for an especially long period of time and this dough does get mixed for a very long time however that long mixing time is how we are able to get this strudel dough to stretch so beautifully and so easily into a super super paper thin layer it's honestly way easier than you think as long as you mix it enough and other than that long mixing the dough is very simple to make and easy to put together so we're going to start by adding our dry ingredients into the bowl we have bread flour in this recipe the reason that we're using bread flour is because it does have a higher protein content it's going to be a little bit easier to build that strength that we want than it would be with all purpose did i just spill a whole bunch in the front yeah i didn't see it okay so into the bowl goes our bread flour and also some fine sea salt we'll just mix that together for just 10 seconds just until those two are combined and the salt is nice and dispersed in the flour our dry ingredients are incorporated it's time to kind of whisk together our wet ingredients so i've got water eggs and i also have some vegetable oil and some vinegar don't worry about the vinegar we're only using a very small amount we're adding it because it helps to promote the elasticity in the final dough and then that vegetable oil is going to enrich the dough slightly and it's just going to make it a little less prone to sticking when we're using it later as well now we're not using the whole egg we're just using the egg yolks so i'm going to go ahead and separate my eggs and i'll just drop the yolks right into our measuring cup there and we can save these egg whites for another baking project maybe to make a meringue for a pie or some royal icing [Music] i'm going to whisk these ingredients just lightly so that they are combined before i add them it's just going to make the mixture come together a little bit quicker and keep everything nice and homogeneous which as you know is one of my favorite words in baking all right so i'm just going to turn it on low speed add our liquid ingredients and we're going to mix on low speed for about a minute until the dough starts to come together kind of as one uniform dough then we start the intense mixing once the ingredients have come together and just started to form an even dough it's still going to look really shaggy it's going to look not smooth at all then we're going to go ahead and start mixing we can just we want to keep it on low speed make sure that we have the bowl locked if it can be and that we are working in a safe way so that we don't you know send our mixer going rogue so i'm just going to turn it back on we're going to mix it until it is nice and smooth for 10 minutes then we're going to have to knock that speed up higher and mix it even more [Music] after the first 10 minute mixing period on low speed the dough will be fairly together it'll even look smooth it'll still look quite soft don't worry about that now we're going to raise the speed up to a high speed and we are going to mix for 10 minutes more okay we're there what is so cool about this intense mixing process is that it's going to start out looking super sticky and and definitely not like a dough you can stretch and when it's done it is so smooth it's formed a really smooth nice ball around the kitchenaid attachment and you can just see it's this like very elastic dough that all wants to stay together and that staying together is how we're going to be able to stretch it but with intense mixing comes an intense need for some gluten relaxation so we now need to let our dough chill out rest relax we need to let all that protein strands that we've built up kind of calmed down what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and put it into a greased bowl we're going to cover it with plastic wrap and then we are going to refrigerate it overnight is my ideal which is another great thing about strudel because you can make the dough ahead and the next day be ready to stretch so once i get this into the bowl we're just going to oh [Music] yeah it was intensely adhered to the kitchenaid once it gets into the bowl here i'll kind of form it into a little bit of a ball shape just so that it's ready to stretch when we are ready and you can just see how smooth it is [Music] i'm just gonna form it into a little bit of a ball shape it's just there are no words for how happy this dough makes me look at that what started out as a sticky mess is now this perfect ball of gluedness strudely wonder i will see you tomorrow we will stretch you of course we've got a backup ready to be stretched right now so i'm gonna grab it let's talk about the fillings that go inside the strudel one of the most common fillings for strudel is some type of produce typically strudels are sweet they're desserts for example in the picture that my great-grandma is making strudel she's using cherries probably sour cherries of course apple strudel is incredibly delicious i have an apple filling right here but i also like to make savory strudels right in front of me here i have a kind of cheesy kale walnut filling that's going to be so delicious in one of our strudels so i want to talk about a couple of the other things that are necessary to put in your strudel as well one is this lovely pot of melted butter in front of me melted butter is really important because sort of like when you're working with phyllo dough which is another very very thin dough using a little bit of butter helps to keep the dough moist while you're working with it and of course it's also going to trap a lot of flavor in there that's going to help that strudel crisp up and become even browner in the oven which we love that too typically after stretching we brush the whole strudel with melted butter or we might even kind of drizzle it over the whole thing we'll talk more about that when we're assembling as well in addition to the melted butter and whatever kind of yummy filling is going inside we also need some kind of dry element so typically this is something like bread crumbs or even pound cake crumbs you can save extra little cake and toast them up you can also use ingredients like ground nuts or coconut really anything that's dry that we can put over that butter that's gonna help to absorb a little bit of the moisture that's gonna come off of that produce we're putting inside the last thing i like to talk about is just like with pie or anything else where we're kind of trying to control that moisture sometimes it can be helpful to pre-cook some of the ingredients for a filling for example with this kale filling in front of me i obviously had to cook that down to get that kale to not be as tough and also to have it be you know more uniform something that i can kind of blend up and really spread smoothly and evenly over the strudel over here i have an apple filling and i didn't actually pre-cook the apples instead i incorporated another ingredient that's going to help to control some of the moisture in the overall consistency in this case that ingredient is some dried fruit so things like dried apricots dried cranberries dried apples by pureeing a little bit of that into your filling it's going to suck up some of the moisture of the fresh fruit that you're using so now that you know a little bit about all the different kinds of things that we can put inside let's get to my favorite part the stretch [Music] it's time to stretch the dough i love this part it is so much fun and i think that this is the part that seems the most intimidating to other people but we have just created a dough that was made to be stretched it wants to be stretched it wants to be so thin that we can read a love letter through it that's the old slogan about how thin you should stretch the strudel dough so since i don't have a love letter handy i like to use a tablecloth on my work surface the tablecloth is not only going to help prevent it from sticking it's going to give us almost like handles when we need to we can use the tablecloth to help us move the strudel or move the dough as we assemble it but it also gives us a pattern in this case it's sort of this checkered pattern this gingham and once we can see the gingham pattern through the dough we'll know that it is thin enough now you can really use any kind of tablecloth you want i prefer to use a linen tablecloth or an oil cloth oil cloth is especially wonderful because um if you're a crafter if you have kids and you like to use oil cloth tablecloths in your home they're especially non-stick they're really easy to clean so they make a great option for this but today i'm just using a linen tablecloth i made sure i wash it it's nice and clean not gonna iron it or anything even though we're filming this because we're already making strudel we do not need to have an unwrinkled tablecloth too we just need the tablecloth to be there to do its job for us so we're going to start by stretching it with our hands and the first thing i need to do is oil my hands a little bit but i'm also going to take off my wedding ring i probably should have done that before i oiled my hands i'm oiling the back of my hands and i'm just using some nonstick spray because it's easiest to get a nice coating and then i'm just going to go ahead and grab the bowl grab the dough i'm gonna grab the dough out of the bowl and we'll start stretching it at first almost like it's pizza dough and we're just thinning it out a little bit starting starting to widen it and i think in my recipe i say something about trying to keep it rectangular but as soon as it becomes hard to handle as a rectangle you can just lay it down and kind of stretch it out with your hands a little bit into a roughly rectangular shape once we've laid it out as a rectangle on our work surface we're going to start to use the back of our hands to stretch the dough now i'm using a kitchen island here or the bake it up a notch table as it's often referred to in this house an island is especially great because we can get all the way around it if you don't have a good table for doing it you can obviously just do it on your kitchen counter and just try to get it as thin as you can to see the pattern underneath rather than worrying about the size but in this case i am going to try to stretch it to pretty much the full width of this table so i start by going in and i'm using the underside of my hands because that'll make it less likely for me to puncture it puncture the dough as i stretch and i'm just gonna after i stretch it a little bit i'm just gonna lay it down if your tablecloth like mine i'm having a little bit of a struggle with it bunching a little bit right in the middle don't worry about that don't worry about any visible lines you see on your strudel don't even worry if you accidentally do puncture a hole and stretch it we're gonna roll this all up into a big strudel so most likely any hole that happens is going to be completely covered up by the time we're done assembling it so that's why i want to say give this a try don't be scared because it's really a wonderful process for anyone who loves to bake and you're going to surprise yourself and when you reach the end of a stretch just kind of place it down on the tablecloth you don't need to press it down but placing it down on the tablecloth is gonna it's sticky enough of a dough it's not gonna stick to your hands but it's going to stick to the tablecloth just enough that we're able to pick up the other pieces around it and start to pull again once you reach the edges of your table you can almost use the edges and the gravity of the edge of the table to help you kind of weigh down the dough anchoring it to one side we're already getting there you can see a little bit on this side we can almost make out the side the little bit of uh pattern under our tablecloth but not quite that is not thin enough we're gonna take it real thin see i just tore it a little bit at the edges totally okay nothing wrong with this at all i'm not freaking out are you freaking out i'm not freaking out i'm just gonna put it down it's fine don't be tempted to patch any tears that's one thing that is really important we'll talk more about that a little later [Music] we've stretched it now i've got some slightly thicker pieces at the edges and that's okay because i'm going to have to trim some of that excess off so don't worry about that and i even have a big old hole right in the front of my table here i'm not trying to hide it there's a hole there it's okay because we're making strudel and it's all going to get rolled up i don't want the fact that you could tear the dough to make you think that you should not try this so i wanted to say even i tear my dough sometimes it definitely happens that's what happens when you're making an insanely thick dough thin dough an insanely thin dough okay and you can even see right here you can see that gingham through everywhere where we've stretched and our dough is so so beautifully thin okay [Music] the first thing that we're gonna do is we are going to drizzle melted butter all over the surface the recipe calls for a certain amount of butter we want to use about half of it in this aspect of the preparation we'll use the rest to brush over the top after we've assembled the strudel while you can brush the butter on any kind of movement is very likely to tear this dough especially if it meets any kind of resistance so i do actually recommend sort of just drizzling it using your pastry brush [Music] make it rain butter [Music] honestly i could drizzle butter all day that was really fun now we're going to give a nice sprinkling all over the surface of in this case this is my apple strudel recipe and i'm using finely ground candied pecans as that sort of dry ingredient on top of the butter so we just want to sprinkle it all over get a nice even coating on the base of the strudel this way because i didn't cook the apples in the filling it's going to help just make sure that the strudel dough doesn't just sog up that it has some kind of help there okay now that i've got this kind of base coat i'm going to go ahead and use scissors to trim off all the excess or too thick dough this is really important because anywhere where the dough is too thick it's actually going to be really really tough you can save this dough and re-stretch it but it needs to relax again so just kind of keep it aside and if you want to you can trim it before you put all the toppings on so that you don't risk getting any pieces of other ingredients in that excess dough so it's completely up to you i often make strudels like i make multiple of them so it's sort of nice if you're making multiple you can kind of just save that excess dough and use it for another strudel down the line [Music] all right i'm going to start adding my apple filling over and i'm just dolloping it all over now this is an important thing you'll notice that this is a pretty thick filling i mentioned how my grandma was using cherries when she was assembling it she was just using halved pitted cherries so she kind of had her um base mixture of bread crumbs or cake crumbs or nuts and the butter and then she would just put those pitted half cherries over the top so it's not important to have even coverage with the filling remember we're going to roll all this up and the action of rolling it up is going to help ensure that we have it a little bit more evenly in each piece so for now all we're doing is kind of dolloping it if your filling is too thin when you go to roll it up it's just going to come out the sides and we definitely don't want that if your filling is too thick it could tear the dough if you go to spread it so that's the reason i'm dolloping rather than trying to spread it on another great way to do this would be a piping bag but i like getting my hands dirty this filling is apples and pecans and i mentioned the dried apricots that are in there to help control the consistency and also just add another kind of depth of fruity flavor and of course like always you can find this recipe and all the recipes that we're using in this episode in the description box of this video and they're all on food 52. okay quick rinse of my hands before we start to roll and then it is time a landscape complete with apple mountains and sweet pecan valleys with a buttery river running right through it we're gonna start the rolling process on one of the shorter ends of your strudel and i usually just start with my fingertips because that helps to make the tightest initial spiral and what we're gonna do is just roll it right up if it ever gets stuck or gets tricky this is one of the other reasons that we love having the tablecloth because we can actually just use the tablecloth to help roll our strudel but i think you'll discover that it's actually pretty easy to roll it just like this [Music] when i get to just about the end i want to go ahead and take a little bit of a look at it and trim off any doughy pieces at the end that don't have filling this one had a little bit of filling and now we're going to grab a baking sheet we want to line the baking sheet with parchment and i usually like to lay my strudel diagonally across the baking sheet because it's a little bit too big otherwise if it's too big for any baking sheet you have you can also cut the strudel at any point and bake it as two separate strudels but remember a smaller strudel will affect the bake time of the recipe slightly you can do a lot of different things to kind of nudge it onto a baking sheet one thing you can do is sort of put a piece of parchment at the end of where you're rolling and just roll it onto that parchment but what i'm going to do because i just want to again really don't want people to be scared of strudel i'm actually just going to pick this up and put it diagonally onto my baking sheet because i want to show people that there's nothing to be scared of here the only important thing is we want to make sure that the seam side is as down as possible so that we don't risk any unfurling in the oven and see i've got it diagonally on the baking sheet and it fits perfectly can you cut you can barely even see it it's so big now we're gonna go ahead brush this with some more melted butter finish it with a little bit of turbinado sugar and it's ready for the oven in front of me i have two beautifully baked strudels and so i want to talk for just a second about determining the doneness of a strudel like a lot of things that are filled it can be really difficult to tell when the strudel is done a toothpick test is one of the best things because if it still feels soft in the very center the interior pastry probably isn't cooked when you go to slice a fully baked and cooled strudel under baked pastry in the center will be a little bit translucent it might look a little gummy but as long as it's a nice solid color it should be baked all the way through and we just want to make sure that it's baked all the way through because that's how we're going to get the best variance of texture in our final strudel i like to bake the strudel until it's really evenly golden brown all over but if for some reason it's browning faster than you maybe would like just go ahead and knock the oven temperature down about 25 degrees for the remainder of baking that way you're going to not continue to over brown it too much but you're going to continue to bake it long enough to get the center of the strudel properly cooked some people might think that stretching the dough for the strudel is the hardest part about the process but for me actually slicing it and getting beautiful slices is really the trickiest part the good news is if you don't get the most beautiful slice it does not mean your strudel is any less delicious but because the crust is so thin so crisp and so shattery sometimes it can just take a little bit of practice to get the perfect kind of cut so which one do we want to cut open first let's cut open our apple pecan first so you can always just cut a little piece off the end i'm using a serrated knife and i am kind of gripping the sides of the strudel just to make sure um that you know nothing's going to kind of move as i get started here and then we're just going to cut ourselves some slices you can also cut you can cut different thicknesses depending on what you like to do sometimes um you can cut i cut on a bias and that's also really lovely actually this one is is beautiful i'm just kind of holding the outside and i'm starting i'm making on my little mark with the serrated and i am using kind of a sawing motion and make sure you just cut all the way to the bottom and as long as you're handling it more gently you're going to end up with like a really nice well-filled spiral this strudel is properly baked and you can kind of tell by the color of the dough because it is even if it looks a little softer in the center that's just from all the moisture of the filling but it is not translucent it's a nice color we know it's properly baked beautiful all right let's try our chocolate coconut strudel here [Music] and see here's a good example my my strudel cracked and crumbled a little bit here it's still completely fine i just that's what we're kind of facing um this is got a milk chocolate fudge and delicious sweetened coconut inside this is such a yummy strudel the chocolate strudel so even when you get that little bit of cracking this is really the worst that's gonna happen you're just gonna have a slightly less attractive piece but that does not make this slice of strudel any less delicious so use a sharp serrated knife and use a little bit of patience to get your best strudel slices [Music] normally when we shoot the mistakes happen section of bake it up a notch i have several mistakes in front of me but my relationship with strudel is extra special because i really don't feel like you can mess this up so i don't want to emphasize the mistakes as much in this episode we didn't make a bunch of mistake strudels however we already sort of talked about some of the ways that things can go wrong and i do just want to kind of coach you through it as best i can the first is not trying to patch any tears when you have them when you attempt to patch a tear you make the dough thicker in that spot which can actually make it tougher and usually the patch won't survive as soon as you go to stretch again it's going to burst open so just don't worry about holes that happen just try to avoid making them bigger whenever possible the second thing that can happen we talked about a little bit as i was applying the fillings to my strudel dough you just want to be careful when you're applying filling whether it's melted butter or whether it's a firmer kale filling you just want to use a gentle hand as you sort of apply those because using too much force with any baking tool whether it's a pastry brush a spatula is going to make your dough very likely to tear oh the last one's under baking of course and the last one i talked about a little bit already which is just taking care to properly bake your strudel we went through all of this work we want to make sure it gets baked all the way into the center and is not just crisp on the outside but is nice and fully baked all the way through remember a good visual indicator for under baked strudel is that it'll look a little translucent or gummy in the center just now before we started filming i put out all of our different strudels from this episode and i said wow this is so gratifying because that is how i feel that's why i think this is such a fun project for bakers let's talk about the different strudels that i made behind the scenes remember all of these recipes are available on food 52 and you can find them linked in the video description below right in front of me i've got the apple pecan candied pecans tons of apple so fall in front of me i've got the chocolate coconut strudel which uses a milk chocolate fudge sauce in the center along with toasted coconut so yummy definitely really different than the kind of strudel my grandma would make and we've got a delicious savory strudel here this is kale and walnut with a little bit of cheese in there parmesan all over the top this is such a good strudel alongside a salad for a delicious meal and then over here i have a really unique strudel this is a great one to start with if the whole process intimidates you a little bit because after you roll up the strudel you make it in sort of an s shape and put it into an 8x8 pan and then you drown it in custard that's right it's such a delicious recipe that's both all the wonderful layers of strudel filled with delicious creamy filling and also really really yummy custard too thank you so much for joining me for this episode of bake it up a notch where we talked all things strudel this is a very special episode for me and i really really hope that it encourages you to tackle a baking project that you maybe were too intimidated to before this episode this episode's got all the tools you need to get it right and what a great thing to be making this fall this winter this holiday season please be sure to like and subscribe so that you can be made aware of new episodes of bake it up a notch as they come available each month and i also want to get everyone ready because the holiday episodes of bake it up a notch are coming up and this year i am tackling my three favorite types of gingerbread that's right did you know that there are many many kinds of gingerbread i'm gonna be breaking down my three favorite recipes and i cannot wait to share them with you so be sure to join us for our next episode happy baking [Music] bye

Channel: Food52

Views: 88,906

Keywords: Food52, food, cooking, recipe, chef, foodie, cook, home cooking videos, bake it up a notch, erin mcdowell, erin jeanne mcdowell, how to make strudel, how to bake strudel, apple strudel recipe, homemade strudel recipe, custard strudel recipe, kale walnut strudel recipe, how to make strudel dough, how to make chocolate strudel, how to make apple strudel, chocolate strudel recipe, easy apple strudel recipe, easy chocolate strudel recipe, best apple strudel, easy custard strudel

Id: qlhWl3_SebY

Length: 30min 32sec (1832 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 12 2021