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Title: Real Homemade Strudel Dough
Categories: Bread Dessert Blank
Yield: 1 Servings
| 3 | c | Flour |
| Pinch of salt | ||
| 2 | Eggs; beaten | |
| 1 | tb | Plus 1 tsp butter; melted |
| 1/4 | ts | Vinegar |
| 3/4 | c | Warm milk |
| 3/4 | lb | Unsalted butter; clarified |
In the work bowl of a food processor, combine the flour with the salt. Add the eggs, melted butter and vinegar and process until well mixed. Add the milk and process until all has been absorbed. Scrape down the sides and run the processor for a minut e more until the dough is smooth and elastic.
Form into a ball, flour lightly and set aside under a turned-over bowl for 10 minutes.
Have ready a filling of your choice.
Place a cloth (an old clean bed sheet works great) over a large table you can walk around, and flour the cloth liberally.
On a lightly floured counter, roll the dough out into a rectangle as lareg and flat as possible without tearing. Place it on the floured cloth. Remove all jewelry from your hands and wrists. Dip the backs of your hands in flour. Form your hands into loose fists, tucking your thumbs under your other fingers, and slide them under the dough. Gently pull your hands away from each other and the dough will begin to stretch between them. Toss the dough gently to move it a bit to the right or the left, so that as your hands move, they keep stretching the dough evenly all the way around. You will need to walk around the table as the dough gets increasingly larger. Stretch the dough into as thin a sheet as possible. Do not pinch the dough, which can tear it; rather, move your fists in gentle waves from the center toward the edge, all the way around the dough, allowing the weight of the dough and the movement of your hands to stretch and thin the dough.
Eventually the sheet of dough will become so large that you will not be able to support it on your hands alone. Smooth it out on the table and, walking around the table, work each section of dough with loose fists, as previously described, until the dough is so thin you can see the shadow of your hands through it. If the edges of the dough are still thick, ease them out gently with your fingertips. Trim off any thick edges that remain. The dough can be cut in half to make it easier to roll into strudel.
Brush the dough with some of the clarified butter and fold in half. Brush with more clarified butter and spread the filling across the dough, mounding more of it along one of the longer sides. Roll up jelly roll-style, starting at the edge where the filling is mounded. This is easily done by lifting the cloth along the side you want the roll to start. The sheet of dough will naturally roll up on itself into a long thin log. Brush the outside with more clarified butter, cut in four lengths, which will fit on a sheet pan, and slide onto two buttered sheet pans.
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