My family’s famous yeast dough strudel is surprisingly easy

My family’s yeast strudel is made from a rich and light buttery yeast dough filled with cinnamon sugar, honey, walnuts, and raisins to make a breakfast or dessert bread that feeds a crowd.

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My great-grandma Bee of apple strudel fame used to make this second kind of strudel, made with yeast dough. The nice thing about it is that it’s much easier to make than the more delicate apple strudel. Growing up, she called it “Omaha strudel” because whenever any part of our family was visiting her in Missouri from Omaha, she made up a batch, wrapped them in foil and meant for you to take them back to Omaha usually with a suitcase of stuffed peppers. That’s not a typo friends, I did indeed say a suitcase of stuffed peppers. My grandma was both hilariously insistent and generous like that.

If you have guests coming or just want to make a dessert that feeds a lot of people in one go, it’s hard to get easier than this yeast strudel. The sticky rich filling is a treat with a fat cup of coffee and if there’s leftovers a few days down the road, you can make a quick round of the world’s best bread pudding.

Yeast Strudel with walnuts, honey, and cinnamon (Hefestrudel mit Walnüssen, Honig und Zimt)

Why you’ll love this bread

1. Easy: If you can make cinnamon rolls, you can make this bread, but it’s even easier since you don’t have to cut the roll. This makes this bread highly transportable and keeps it fresh for a little longer.
2. Feeds a million people practically: My Dad’s side of the family is really big, so a bread like this, which my great-grandma and my grandpa both made could easily serve dessert to a huge crowd on the cheap. You can easily serve 30 with both these loaves, making this much more economical than making practically any baked good. Yeasted cakes were how people in hard times still had celebratory things to eat. This is right up there with the incredible potratna potica I made with my students for Easter last year for “big bang for your buck” desserts.
3. No, it doesn’t taste like raisin bread: I know raisins are a polarizing ingredient. I’m in my “love” camp, but if you are a firm hater of these little dried fruits, I will tell you now that this bread is not obviously a raisin bread. The honey and nuts make it more complex, and truly, the raisins are there to absorb the syrup that forms when the brown sugar and honey melts down on the inside of the bread.

Tricks for making the best yeast dough strudel

1. Do NOT add more flour: This is a very rich dough with plenty of butter and eggs enough to make this last longer than most breads. As with all enriched doughs, the dough will feel sticky, but rest assured it will not stick. Especially if you follow #2.
2. Use a pastry cloth: If you roll this out on a lightly floured pastry cloth, the dough will not stick. Just like with big boy strudel which gets pulled on a lightly floured tablecloth, a pastry cloth makes it easy to roll out the dough and assemble the strudel.
3. Seal the log well: After you’ve filled and rolled up your strudel, be sure to fold the ends underneath or pinching the roll ends together. Also seal the seam on the bottom of the roll. Without doing so, the filling will leak out making for delicious but also sticky mess.
4. Choose your size: I like making my yeast strudel into 2 logs, though if you’re freezing them (and you should because they do so well) it makes more sense to make them into 4. The smaller size fits into a gallon bag much more easily. Shape the loaves per the recipe, and then cut each log into 2, sealing up the ends. This way you’ll have 4 smaller logs that are ready to freeze. If my Grandma had had a deep freeze, I’m convinced she would have kept it stocked with this strudel for out of towners always.

Yeast dough strudel

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• Author: Elizabeth Farr
• Total Time: 3 hours 5 minutes
• Yield: 30 pieces 1x

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Description

I never ate my great-grandma’s celebrated apple strudel while she was still alive because she always made us this version, made with a buttery soft yeast dough instead.  Think of it like a cinnamon roll with much more flavor and less goo.  It’s more elegant than a cinnamon roll, easier to make, and feeds a crowd easily.  Smart my Grandma was.

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Ingredients

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Yeast strudel dough

• 1/4 cup warm water (59 mL)
• 2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1/2 cup whole milk (118 mL)
• 1 stick butter (113 g)
• 1/2 cup sugar (100 g)
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• zest from 1 lemon 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla paste or vanilla extract
• 3 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (455 g)

Cinnamon raisin honey filling

• 1 cup brown sugar (213 g)
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (64 g)
• 1/4 cup honey (84 g)
• 1/3 cup golden raisins (50 g)

Egg wash

• 1 large egg
• 1 tablespoon milk

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Instructions

Make the dough

 

1. Measure out the sugar, and then sprinkle a pinch of it into a small bowl with the warm water and yeast. Stir to dissolve, and then set aside for about 5 minutes until the yeast is foamy.
2. Heat the milk in a small pan until you see bubbles at the edges. Cut up the butter then stir it into the hot milk to melt along with the rest of the sugar. When the butter is melted, crack in the eggs and beat them until you get a smooth mixture.
3. Mix the flour and the salt in a large mixing bowl or a stand mixer and then make a well in the center. Pour the milk/butter mixture into the well, then the yeast mixture as well as the vanilla paste and lemon zest.
4. Stir the ingredients with a wooden spoon to make a shaggy dough.
5. For kneading, by machine, switch to the dough hook on your mixer and let the mixer run on low speed until you get a smooth, sticky, elastic dough, about 5 minutes To knead by hand: turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface, and use a bench scraper to slap the dough down, then bring the edges towards the center. Repeat this motion for 10 minutes, until you have a smooth elastic dough. Resist the urge to add more flour. This dough will be quite soft, but most of the stickiness will go away after the dough has risen.
6. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and set aside to rise for about 90 minutes.  Meanwhile, make the filling.

 

Assemble the strudel

1. Line a sheet tray with a piece of parchment.
2. Mix the brown sugar, walnuts, cinnamon and honey in a small bowl.  The filling will be a very thick paste.
3. Lightly flour a pastry cloth or a clean kitchen towel. 
4. Divide the dough in two parts.  Sprinkle a little flour on one portion of the dough and then roll out the dough into a rectangle about 11” x 14”.
5. Crumble half of the filling over the dough and then do your best to spread it over the dough.
6. Sprinkle the raisins over the filling.
7. Roll the dough over itself on the long edge into a tight log.
8. Pinch the seam on the bottom of the log to seal it well, and then tuck the ends under or pinch the rolled edges of the seam well so that the filling does not leak out during baking.
9. Place the finished log on the prepared baking sheet.
10. Repeat the rolling and filling for the second piece of dough. 
11. Cover the logs with a clean kitchen towel to rise for 45 minutes.
12. Towards the end of the 45 minutes, preheat the oven to 350 F (180 F).
13. Just before baking, beat together the egg and milk to make an egg wash.  Brush the logs well with the egg wash.
14. Bake the logs for 20-25 minutes until the dough is set and the middle springs back when you touch it.
15. Allow the logs to cool completely before slicing.
16. Store the strudel at room temperature for up to 3 days or freeze the baked logs for longer storage. 

Equipment

pastry cloth

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rolling pin

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Notes

Freezer strudel: If you want to make this recipe exclusively for freezing, it’s best to divide each log into 2 before baking.  This will give you 4 strudels and each will be the perfect size for fitting into a gallon Ziploc bag. 

• Prep Time: 20 minutes
• + 2 hours 15 minutes for rising:
• Cook Time: 25 minutes
• Category: Morning breads
• Method: Oven
• Cuisine: German

Nutrition

• Serving Size: 1 slice
• Calories: 154
• Sugar: 13.6 g
• Sodium: 48.5 mg
• Fat: 5 g
• Carbohydrates: 25.6 g
• Protein: 2.6 g
• Cholesterol: 20.9 mg