Easy Recipes

Ingredients:

1 Ready rolled puff pastry sheet (see notes below)
4 Apples (medium size)
Juice from half a lemon
60 g (2 ½ oz) raisins
100 ml (4 fl oz) Dark rum - about a glass
60 g (2 ½ oz) Pine kernels
50 g (2 oz) Sugar
50 g (2 oz) Apricot preserve
Orange zest from one orange
2 or 4 g (½ tbs or 1 tbs) Ground cinnamon - depending on your taste
30 g (slightly more than 1 oz) Breadcrumbs
10 g (½ oz) Butter
1 Egg yolk
15 ml (1 tbs) Milk
Icing sugar for garnish

Note:

I bought the ready rolled puff pastry sheet in the supermarket, size about 350 mm x 225 mm (14in x 9in). Supermarkets nowadays offer a wide range of choices. You can also make the strudel using filo pastry, but you need to use about 6 layers, one on the top of each other and each layer needs to be brushed with melted butter.

Directions:

Firstly, 1 hour before you start making the strudel, soak the raisins into the glass of rum.

After 1 hour, separate the raisins from the rum using a sieve.

Put the raisins into a small container and set aside. Keep the rum; at a later stage we will use some of it (2 or 3 dessert spoons will be added to the strudel filling).

Next, peel and slice the apples (into small slices about 2-3 mm thick). Put the slices into a large bowl.

Add some lemon juice and mix to distribute the lemon juice all over the apple slices.

Add the raisins.

Add the pine kernels.

Add the orange zest.

Add the cinnamon.

Add the sugar.

Add the apricot preserve.

Finally, add 2 or 3 dessert spoons of rum. And the rest, drink it!

Mix everything together to evenly distribute the various Ingredients.

Cover the bowl with cling film and set it aside in the refrigerator until you are ready to use it as filling.

Now, put the butter into a pan over a medium heat. When the butter starts bubbling, add the breadcrumbs and toast for few minutes until lightly brown.

This is what you should have.

Put the breadcrumbs into a small bowl to cool down.

Meanwhile, spread some flour onto a working surface.

Unroll your pastry and start stretching it with a rolling pin. Usually ready rolled pastry is too thick for the purpose of making strudel, so you need to enlarge the sheet and make it thinner (about 2 mm thick).

Next, drag the sheet over a tea towel and give it a gentle stretch using your hands. Then you can cut the border with a pastry wheel, just to give the sheet a decent rectangular shape!

Next, spread the breadcrumbs over the pastry sheet.

Then, take the large bowl from the refrigerator and put the contents in the centre of the pastry sheet, as shown in the photograph.

Fold one side of the sheet (the longer side) over the filling. This operation will be easier if you help yourself lifting the tea towel from its corners and folding it towards the centre of the pastry sheet.

Do the same with the opposite side.

Take a large tray and cover its bottom with a layer of baking paper. Brush the paper with melted butter or margarine. At this stage switch the oven on and set it at 180ºC (gas mark 5).

Next, put the egg yolk into a small bowl and add the milk.

Beat the egg yolk and milk with a fork until they are evenly mixed.

Brush the egg batter all over the strudel.

Cover the tray with foil, try to keep the area in the centre lifted. The foil will protect the strudel from burning during the first stage of cooking. Now, put the tray in the oven and cook for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, take the tray out of the oven and remove the foil.

Put the tray back in the oven and cook for another 15 minutes.

When finished, the strudel should look like this.

Set the strudel onto a wire rack to cool down.

When the strudel is tepid, cut a slice and put the slice onto a plate. Garnish with some icing sugar.

There you go! Apple strudel served with vanilla ice cream.

Ingredients:

500 g (1.1 lb) Durum wheat semolina
10 g (a bit less than ½ oz) Fresh yeast
15 g (1 tbs) Salt
300 ml (½ pint) Warm water (1 part hot and 2 parts cold)
7.5 ml (½ tbs) Malt extract (OPTION)
A small dessert spoon of sugar

Directions:

Put 150 ml of warm water into the jug and break the yeast into pieces and put it into the jug as well.

Add a small dessert spoon of sugar.

Stir until the yeast is dissolved.

Cover the jug with a kitchen towel and leave to rest for about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, put the semolina flour into a big bowl.

Add the salt.

Stir so that the salt is evenly distributed.

After 10 minutes, whisk the jug contents for few seconds.

To make the process easy, I would suggest using a bread machine to work the dough. Add the jug contents into the bread machine bucket.

Put the remaining 150 ml of warm water into the jug.

Add the semolina flour into the bucket.

On the top of the flour add the remaining 150 ml of warm water.

This is just an option. I like to add a small quantity of malt extract.

Now, knead the dough with the bread machine. Most of the bread machines have a specific program for "kneading". You can vary the kneading time modifying the program as you wish. I suggest kneading the dough for about 15 minutes.

When the dough is ready, sprinkle some plain flour in the bottom of the bowl. Put your dough into the bowl.

No matter whether it is winter or summer, I usually rise the dough inside the oven (with the oven OFF) so that I can create a moist and warm environment. In the bottom of the oven I have a tray in which I pour some boiling water from the kettle. Do that and close the oven door. Now, leave the dough to rise for 2 hours (during this time don't open the oven door - a cold draft of air could collapse the dough).

After 2 hours, the volume of the dough has more than doubled.

Now we do the shaping. Put the dough on a working surface, work it with your hands for a few minutes. Then, using a rolling pin, make a rectangular layer, roughly 20x30 cm and 2-3 cm thick.

Roll it as shown in the photopraph.

Take a pizza tray, or anything similar, and cover it with a layer of baking paper. I usually coat the paper with a few drops of olive oil spread by hand; alternatively sprinkle the tray with flour.

Now, the slashing. With a sharp knife, make three oblique cuts on the top of the roll (about ½ cm deep). Slashing is usually done just before baking but you need to pay attention not to slash an over-proved dough otherwise it will collapse, so the first time you make bread try the slashing just before the proving.

Put the tray in the oven (with the oven OFF) and let the roll to rise again, for the second time. Again, use the same technique of having a tray with boiled water in the bottom and keep the oven door closed.

Let the roll to rise for about 1 hour.

After 1 hour the roll should have doubled its size. Remove the tray with water , set the oven to 220ºC (gas mark 7) and switch it on. From now, cook at 220ºC for about 15 minutes and then turn the oven back to 200ºC (gas mark 6) and continue cooking for 20-25 minutes.

Note: there is a tendency, in many bread recipes, to use steam (spraying water on the oven walls during the first 10 minutes of baking) to improve crispness and colour. Well, with conventional ovens the trick rarely works because first you need a very hot steam hitting the bread surface as fast as it can and second, opening the oven door will cause a heat loss. My suggestion is to keep the oven door shut from start to end, and forget about steam tricks!

When cooking, watch you don't burn the bread. Cooking time may vary depending on the oven (you can protect the top of the bread from excessive burning by covering it with foil).

When the bread is ready, leave it to cool down onto a wire rack before eating it.

Buon appetito!

This is another type of bread (the classic country bread) where I used strong white bread flour instead of semolina. The procedure for making it is exactly the same as per the semolina bread, the only difference being that I do not roll it before the second rising; just make a round shaped ban.