Apple Strudel using NM's Instant Puff Pastry

This time around for the Modern Baker Challenge, I chose the Apricot & Almond Strudel recipe from the puff pastries section of Nick Malgieri's book, The Modern Baker.  I was a little nervous about this recipe as the instructions for making his instant puff pastry seemed too easy and I knew it couldn't be that simple.  The pictures all showed a clean work area and perfect looking dough.

Before I started making the instant puff pasty, I had decided I would take pictures at different stages, but as I started into it, I ran into problems from the beginning, so I felt lucky that I even got the puff pastry dough made at all.  My poor old Hamilton Beach food processor bowl only has a 3 cup capacity, so I knew I could only make at most a half batch of Malgieri's instant puff pastry, which was fine since this recipe only required a 1/2 batch.  The amount of butter and flour, though, for a half batch of puff pastry, was still a little much for my food processor bowl.  I had a lot of flour going everywhere and when I went to dump everything out onto my floured mat, I had quite a bit of loose stuff. 

I managed to get the puff pastry made, with a minimal amount of grumbling, wrapped it tightly in plastic wrap and tucked it into the back of the fridge on the bottom shelf.  I was really worried if the stuff was going to roll out OK for the strudel, because it was very crumbly and I had a tough time rolling it up in the last step of making the puff pastry.  I was rolling with one hand and using my large off set spatula with the other, to get under the dough that was sticking to the mat.  It was definitely not a tight log.

Here's my puff pastry log before I started rolling out dough for the strudel,

I wish I could've rolled it tighter to get more layers into my puff pastry, but better luck next time I guess.

I asked hubby, apricots or apples for the filling, and I knew he would pick apples.  He's not a real big fan of apricots, and since fall is quickly approaching, it seemed more appropriate anyway to use an apple filling for the strudel.  Then as I kept looking at the recipe, I just couldn't see apples paring well with the almond part of the filling, which is made w/ almond paste.  I thought the almond paste mixture would overpower the apples and that the apple flavor wouldn't shine through. 

I'd just recently purchased a copy of America's Test Kitchen's third installment of Cooking for Two 2011, and what da ya know, there was a recipe for Quick Apple Strudel near the back.  They used phyllo dough for their strudel, but the filling sounded really good so I decided to double it for my strudel and away I went.

The ATK apple strudel filling consisted of:

1/4 cup golden raisins

1 tablespoon Calvados, applejack, or apple cider (I used cider)

2 tablespoons dried bread crumbs or panko (I used the latter)

1 tablespoon melted butter (for toasting the bread crumbs in a small skillet)

1 medium McIntosh apple, peeled, cored, sliced and diced into 1/4 inch pieces

2 tablespoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Pinch of salt

I doubled this filling recipe and for the apple I used roughly two apples, which consisted of Golden Delicious, Cortland, and a McIntosh.  Whenever I make apple anything I use several different kinds of apples to get varying flavors and textures in the finished dish.

Here's the bottom layer of my strudel before and after laying on the filling,

The top layer of the strudel remained in the fridge while I docked the bottom layer and spread my filling out onto the dough leaving a 1/2 inch margin all around.  Then the top layer came out of the fridge and after cutting the slits in it and brushing egg wash on the edges of the bottom layer, the top was placed on, sealed, crimped, poked, prodded and everything else.  Here she is ready for the oven,

and at this point is where my tummy usually starts growling a little prematurely, since I know it'll still be a while before we can dig in!

Unfortunately, the strudel wouldn't fit on my rimmed half sheet pan, so I then had to bake it on my rimless air bake cookie sheet and butter went everywhere in the baking process.  Oh well, I rarely make oven messes so this little one shouldn't be too hard to clean up.

It was worth it and hubby declared that it was delicious.  I thought it was good, and very flaky tender, but it was just a tad bit greasy tasting to me, because of all the butter.  I know one thing, I probably won't be trying to make my own puff pastry again until I get a knew 12-cup food processor!

Yum!!!!!!!!

Whole Wheat w/ Pecans & Golden Raisins (Mellow Bakers: September)

I had already decided that I wanted to make this bread into rolls.  Then, as usual, I reasoned that soup would be the best dish to serve my rolls with.  Next, I needed some cooler weather to go with the soup and rolls.  Last week (or was it the week before) there was a brief cold spell following behind Hurrican Irene, but it was gone before I got a chance to make the rolls.

Then, this week another cold front was supposed to be moving thru last evening.  The rain and cold came about 5 hours after dinner, but these rolls and the soup tasted delicious anyway.  I only made 1/3 of the recipe, since I didn't want a ton of leftover rolls, and was able to get 7 good size rolls out of this amount of dough.  It's amazing that these tasted so good, when the only ingredients were flour (whole wheat & bread), water, salt, yeast, raisins, and pecans. 

Since Hamelman said keep the toasting light, I toasted my pecan pieces at 350° for 2-3 minutes, just until they were shiny and started to smell nutty.  The raisins were soaked in warm water for 30 minutes before adding to the dough.  I dried the raisins off really, really good before adding them in.  I didn't even bother using the mixer to try and incorporate the raisins and pecan pieces into the dough.  Its just easier to stick my hands into the stand mixer bowl and knead them into the dough right in the bowl.  As I kneaded, I has happy to deposit the pecan pieces which kept popping out of the dough, into my mouth, since, as usual, my tummy was growling as I was working.

After a rather long fermentation of two hours, with a fold in between, I portioned the dough into 3 oz pieces, covered them for 10 minutes, then shaped them into round rolls.  They had a final fermentation of about 1 hour and baked for ~18 minutes on a parchment lined sheet pan.  I tried to score a couple of the rolls for fun and left the others alone.   There was already a steam pan on the bottom oven shelf from baking hoagie rolls a few hours earlier, so I went ahead and put some hot water into the steam pan right after I slid the rolls into the oven.

 

The soup I chose to go with the rolls was from Dara's Cookin' Canuck and it was delicious!!  It was Chicken, Corn & Potato Chowder and had just enough spice to warm you, but not any burning heat.  It had green chilies, lots of corn, cheese and a pinch of cayenne pepper in it and was topped w/ bacon, more cheese, and chopped green onion.

Hubby didn't come right out and say the rolls were delicious, probably because of the nuts, but when I asked him if he liked it, he heartily shook his head, as his mouth was full of hot, buttered whole wheat roll.  I think we both like most of the breads I make, just because they taste so much better than what you can buy at the store.

Here's a picture of just the hoagie rolls that I made earlier in the day.  It was my first go at making hoagie rolls and I was really happy with the way they turned out, despite the one roll that kind of resembles a bowling pin shape:)  The hoagie rolls are being turned into Greek Turkey Meatball Subs tonight.  Mmmmmm!!

Be sure and go see how the whole wheat w/ pecans and golden raisins bread turned out for the other mellow bakers this month!