I come from very thick Austrian stock. It's a potent and sticky stock that is quite often difficult to shrug off. Not that I would ever want to shrug it off at all, but it makes it very difficult to resist the urge to bake certain things. It also comes with a lot of pressure (mostly self-inflicted) to create the best of these things. Not the least of these things being a traditional Austrian strudel.
Let me begin this discussion of Austrian Strudel by saying that the most difficult and defining aspect of this dessert is the dough and not-as one might expect- the filling of the finished product. What makes this dough unique-and at the same time frustrating enough to make you want to pull out your hair by the roots and chuck said dough through a glass window- is the fact that when it is pulled and stretched it should be translucent. The dough needs to be worked and stretched until it is thinner than paper and and as big as a table meant to seat six people.
The very first time I made this I learned something very important about baking: if the recipe advises you to make two batches of something "just in case", not only will that something be as temperamental as a a cat being fed a pill, but also do be sure to actually make two.
The dough itself is the easiest thing you will ever throw together (seriously. A proboscis monkey could do this blindfolded). Flour, water, oil, and vinegar go into your mixer and you let the paddle do all the work. What you get is an innocent little ball of soft fluffy dough about the size of a fist. You throw the ball around for a while to work the gluten in the flour and then coat it in oil and let it sit while you watch tv for an hour. When Grey's Anatomy is over you can start peeling your apples (or in my case, peeling my apples and slicing my plum-apricot mutant hybrids) and putting together your filling.
Now the fun part. When you initially roll out the dough you will think that this process is easy. That I have entirely overstated the difficulty level here and obviously need to have my head checked. But once the dough gets too big to handle... BAM! Your first rip. Work through it. There is still hope. You now lay the increasingly unweildly mass of dough on your floured tablecloth and begin to really stretch it out. The rips and tears will really start to develop as you try to bend the laws of physics in order to create a sheet of dough only a few atoms thick.
Here's the really painful part: you have to move very quickly as you do all this because the dough will dry out to a crispy, unmanageable sheet that is completely useless if you take too long.
Ecited yet?
In all fairness however, strudel dough is one of the few things I have ever baked where you can clearly see progress every time you make it. And when you get to that point where it stretches beautifully and you can read fine print right through it (all without having a mental breakdown half way through), you will absolutely beam with accomplishment. This I promise.
The real test came when I invited my Austrian grandparents over for dessert and my diabetic grandfather snuck thirds while my grandmother quietly copied the recipe down. Obviously my own Austrian stock hasn't been spoilt!
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