SC - filo dough

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Tara Sersen wrote:
> 
> I thought a strudel dough was more like a sweet bread dough than a
> pastry, like filo.  My grandmother's description of making it is to turn
> the dough out on the center of the bedsheet-covered table on which
> you'll be preparing it, invert a bowl over it, and leave it to rise.
> After you punch it down, you stretch it rather than roll it like you
> would a pastry.  Traditionally, you stretch it until it reaches the
> floor on all sides of the table, then pick up the edge of the sheet to
> roll the dough up, leaving you with about a six or eight foot long
> strudel which you cut into sections to bake.

I'm familiar with the rather exhaustively detailed recipe given by the
Rombauers in early editions of "The Joy of Cooking". As I recall their
recipe doesn't include any type of leavening (unless you count eggs),
and the dough is left long enough to relax some of the developed gluten,
so you can stretch the dough without tearing it. They also specify that
you need to trim the excess dough off the edges of the sheet, because a
combination of gravity and the stretching method dictates that the edges
will be significantly thicker then the center (anyone who's either
dished or raised a piece of steel for armor will probably tell you the same)

I wonder if the recipe you are speaking of is for some kind of hybrid of
strudel and stollen... 

Certainly there are pastries that involve a yeast leavening primarily
for tenderness rather than lift (like croissants, for example) and it's
possible that this is another such, but I've never seen a leavened
strudel before... .

This, of course, is healthy for me, in that it broadens my worldview.

Adamantius
Østgardr, East
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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