Pear & Walnut Strudel

I'm now a member of the Daring Bakers! If you're not familiar with this group, you can read more about it on their website but the short story is that it's a group of people who bake a "challenge recipe" every month in order to increase their baking skills. We all make the same recipe but whomever is "hosting" that month can also allow some leeway in how we go about doing it. For the month of May, the theme was strudel. I had certainly never made anything like it before so I knew it'd be a new experience! The basic dough recipe came from the book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafes of Vienna, Budapest and Prague but the filling was my choice.

• strudel dough
• 6-8 firm pears (not too ripe), peeled, cored and sliced about a 1/4" thick
• 1 orange, juiced
• 3 T. agave nectar
  
• 1 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped
  
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1-2 T. cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Pour the juice and agave nectar over the pears and mix it together well enough to coat all the pear slices. Set aside. In a separate bowl, combine the sugar and cinnamon together and set that aside also.
3. After mixing the strudel dough ingredients and letting it set for the recommended time, you go through the somewhat time-consuming step of rolling it out. I followed the directions by laying out a tablecloth on a large table, rubbing flour into it and setting my dough in the middle. (I made a double batch of the dough so that I would be sure to have plenty. I knew I could always just cut off the extra.) I rolled it out as far as I could make it go with the rolling pin. Then I gently worked my hands underneath it to stretch it out even further. It was sort of reminiscent of the pizza chefs except that the dough didn't fly into the air...thankfully! The finished size was probably around the expected 24"x36" but I did make sure to get rid of all the thickness along the edge. The goal is to have it turn out as flaky and pastry-like as possible, after all.
   
4. Brush a thin layer of melted butter on the dough at this point. I almost missed this part!
5. Just inside of the shorter edge of the rectangle I layered the walnuts, the marinated pears and the cinnamon & sugar mix, leaving a bit of room on either end to seal off the finished product.
6. Use the tablecloth to start rolling the dough over the ingredients. At this point, the dough is far too thin and fragile to manipulate excessively. Keep rolling the strudel up until you get to the end. Cut off any extra dough, especially on either end, and fold under each end to help seal in the filling.
7. Transfer to a greased baking sheet, molding it into more of a round shape, if desired. Brush the top with melted butter and bake until dark golden brown.
8. Let the strudel cool for at least a half hour before slicing but eat it as soon as you're able since it doesn't keep forever. A serrated knife works best to cut through the pastry without damaging it. I would recommend serving the strudel with vanilla bean ice cream or whipped topping as it tastes very much like an apple pie.

It may look somewhat diseased but I'm not 100% sure why!

























The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers.