Passport
Baker
Team Dettweiler Family
Location
New Franken, WI
Baking Challenge
Strudel
Give your dessert a clever name – and tell us about your recipe.
Four of “My Favorite Things” (cream-colored ponies and Crisp Apple Strudels) – and, side note, our family name coincidentally matches a fictional character in The Sound of Music – that of Austrian, Herr Max Detweiler, the von Trapp Family Singers’ friend and performance agent. A few of us got together to try making strudels for the first time. It was intimidating, so having a group felt less daunting. Our dough recipe came from the German-Austrian section of The New Americans chapter of the Heritage Cookbook by Better Homes and Gardens. The recipe made enough for two strudels so we doubled it and made enough for four strudels. Three were for dessert, of course, and the fourth one was a savory main course strudel. Our fillings were the traditional apple strudel with walnuts and currants; rice pudding and cranberry strudel; and cherry strudel with fresh coconut and almond. Our Austrian savory meat strudel contained ground beef, yogurt, egg, red pepper, onions and multiple herbs.
What was the biggest surprise during your baking journey? Did you use any unconventional approaches? What did you learn along the way? Tell us about it!
Our biggest surprise was that the rolling of the pastry went quite easily, lifting the cloth and allowing the fillings to roll down into the stretched out dough. Dough stretching was our most difficult learning curve. By the time we got to the fourth strudel we had no rips or holes. The dough recipe called for butter, not oil, and we wonder if the ease of it in handling was all the better for it. We did not need to flour the cloth or our hands much at all. We learned to see where the dough was already stretched thin enough and where it could use more stretching. Now, when it came to kneading our dough to activate the gluten, we had the most fun. Our recipe for the Cherry Strudel filling told us to “Slap the dough on the table back and forth. To do this, take the dough in your right hand and hit the table with a vengeance as hard as you can. Do this repeatedly for about fifteen minutes.” Our dough recipe just said to knead for five minutes. So we tried both ways and Mr. Hollywood will be glad to know the two strudels with the vengeance technique were certainly stronger and flakier in work-ability and result.
How did you add a Wisconsin twist to your flavors or decoration?
With German speaking people being the largest population immigrating here to Wisconsin, we wished to focus on their food culture as it helps us to identify with our own German name and ancestors coming to America. For ingredients we included Door County cherries from Seaquist Orchards in Sister Bay; pasture-raised beef from Organic Prairie (a farmer-owned cooperative in La Farge); and Wisconsin frozen cranberries left over from the holidays.
How did you do?
Rocked it.
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