Feeling good about my rolling skills with my makeshift rolling pin, i.e. the empty wine bottle, I gave Maureen Evans’ Strudel Pastry a try. In her 140 characters, a filling isn’t specified, but I had visions of Nutella and chopped hazelnuts in flaky pastry. Starting with one cup of flour to 2 tablespoons of cut up butter, coarse crumbs are created, mashed together with a potato masher, which is what I assume she means by “mash tater”, not mashing a real potato into the mix. The addition of 2 teaspoons of yeast dissolved into 2 tablespoons of water barely moistened the dough. With gradual splashes of water, I could barely form it into a crumbly ball. This hard ball, more suited to knocking down bowling pins, is supposed to rise? Well, it didn’t, nor was I able to pull it into a 17″ x 25″ rectangle. I did what I could rolling it out into a semblance of a crust, having faith that Nutella will make it better. Alas, it did not. The result was more like sheetrock than pastry. Sad.
I suspect that my yeast was dead. I suspect that given the dry dough, I should have moistened with cream, more butter, or oil, instead of water. I suspect that adding a mashed potato would have been better than this.
