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Ingredients For pastry dough
Directions Make a rather firm dough with the flour, warm milk, a piece of butter about the size of a walnut, an egg, and a pinch of salt.
Notes The recipe in this entry was taken from "La Scienza in Cucina e L'Arte di Mangiar Bene manuale Pratico per le Famiglie" compilato da Pellegrino Artusi. The book was first published in 1891. Since then many Italian editions have been published. English translations of this cookbook under the title "Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well" are available. At www.archive.org Olga Ragusa's selection of recipes from Pellegrino's famous Italian cookbook can be found in its entirety (It's free to download). Her selection entitled, "The Italian Cook Book," was first published in 1945 by S.F. Vanni.... The following text comes from Wikipedia: "An apple strudel Origin Place of origin Austria Details Type Pastry Main ingredient Filo pastry A strudel is a type of layered pastry with a sweet?filling. It is often served with cream. It became popular in the 18th century through the Habsburg Empire. Strudel is most often associated with Austrian cuisine but is also a traditional pastry in the whole area of the former Austro-Hungarian empire. The oldest Strudel recipe (a millirahmstrudel) is from 1696, in a handwritten recipe at the Viennese City Library, Wiener Stadtbibliothek. The pastry descends from similar Near Eastern pastries (see baklava and Turkish cuisine). Etymology Strudel is an English loanword from German. The word derives from the German word Strudel, which in Middle High German literally means 'whirlpool' or 'eddy'. In Hungary, it is known as rtes, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia as trudla or savijača, in Slovenia astrudelj or zavitek, in the Czech Republic as zvin or trdl,in Poland and Romania as ștrudel, and in Slovakia as trdľa or zvin. The pastry The best-known strudels are Apfelstrudel (German for apple strudel) and Topfenstrudel (with sweet soft quark cheese, in German Topfen cheese), followed by the Millirahmstrudel (Milk-cream strudel, Milchrahmstrudel). In Slovenia, cottage cheese is used instead of quark. Other strudel types include sour cherry (Weichselstrudel), sweet cherry, nut filled (Nussstrudel), Apricot Strudel, Plum Strudel, poppy seed strudel (Mohnstrudel), and raisin strudel.There are also savory strudels incorporating spinach, cabbage, pumpkin, and sauerkraut, and versions containing meat fillings like the (Lungenstrudel) or (Fleischstrudel). Traditional Austrian and Czech Strudel pastry is different from strudels elsewhere, which are often made from puff pastry. The traditional Strudel pastry dough is very elastic. It is made from flour with a high gluten content, egg, water, and butter with no sugar added. The dough is worked vigorously, rested, and then rolled out and stretched by hand very thinly with the help of a clean linen tea towel[11] or kitchen paper. Purists say (hyperbolicly) that it should be so thin that you can read a newspaper through it. A legend has it that the Austrian Emperor's perfectionist cook decreed that it should be possible to read a love letter through it. The thin dough is still laid out on a tea towel, and the filling is spread on it. The dough with the filling on top is rolled up carefully with the help of the tea towel and baked in the oven......." P.S. I tried this recipe and found the filling for the strudel very good. The use of currants makes it colorful and tasty. Photo and notes: Mary Melfi. |