Master Chef Apple Strudel

Directions

Three cups sifted flour. Make well. Add 2 beaten eggs. Mix with wire beater.

Add ½ cup warm water and 1 tablespoon melted butter. Mix well with spoon and knead with fingers for about 2 minutes, adding flour as needed to prevent sticking, and making it into a ball.

Put dough in a bowl covered with a dish towel and set aside in a warm place (I use my oven which is warm because of the pilot light. Don't light oven until much later on). This whole procedure is quite time consuming and takes about 1½ hours to prepare. Let dough rest while peeling and slicing 3 pounds large MacIntosh apples. (Pick largest apples you can find to facilitate peeling procedure.)

STEP TWO: Cut dough in half. Put half back in bowl covered with dish towel in warm place. On top of a well floured cloth tablecloth roll out ½ dough. Drizzle on 1 tablespoon melted butter spreading all over rolled out dough.

Pick up rolled out dough and stretch as much as possible (just like a pizza dough is stretched, making fists with hands to prevent making too many holes in dough -- usually a hole or two appears which is not unusual).

Put back on well floured tablecloth. Next try to achieve a paper thin dough by pulling all around and around it with the fingers. Don't worry if there are a few holes here and there.

STEP THREE: Using HALF of the thinly sliced apples, spread them all uniformly over dough that you covered the tablecloth with. Sprinkle on top of apples: 7 to 9 teaspoons sugar according to taste and depending on tartness of apples -- 4 teaspoons bread crumbs -- sift cinnamon all over above- drizzle on ¼ pound melted butter -- also 2 beaten eggs spreading the eggs with a fork in a circular motion.

Pick up the tablecloth and make a long roll and carefully lift roll into a large ungreased shallow baking pan. If you prefer you may put the roll into a pie plate starting in the middle and making a circle with the roll.

Repeat steps 2 and 3, using second half of dough and the remaining half of apples. Since these steps take about 20 minutes, allow about 10 minutes to preheat the oven to 400℉ (200℃).

After making the roll, if you choose to use a large shallow baking pan careful ly put the roll in the pan right along with first half of roll. You will have about four strips in the pan because the roll will be that long. If you used a pie plate, take a second pie plate for the second half of the strudel. Now you are finally ready to put the strudl in the oven: 400℉ (200℃) for 40 minutes and 15 minutes more at 350℉ (180℃).

Allow strudl to cool 20 to 25 minutes. Slice and put on serving plate.