Fast and Easy Peach Strudel - Forced to Use Frozen Puff Pastry Once Again

There are two ways to make strudel, the right way, and the way I make it in this peach strudel video recipe. This fast and easy version uses puff pastry, instead of the homemade dough that's stretched paper-thin over kitchen towels, and rolled up into the multilayered masterpiece invented in Austria centuries ago. While Austria gets credit for its origins, the word "studel" is German, and most consider this to be a German pastry.

Back in culinary school I remember being so excited to learn we were going to be taught this impossibly flaky, and airy puff pastry. We rolled and folded, and rolled and folded in all that butter, and when we were done our puffy pastry looked nothing like the stuff the chef had made. Mine was flat, tough, and so not flaky.

So, like most cooks do, I eventually resigned myself to the fact that puff pastry would just be one of those products I would be forced to buy. It was something that was going to take more practice time to perfect than I had to devote - especially for something I would use only occasionally.

If you are in a big city, you may find a bakery or patisserie that sells it frozen. But, if not, take comfort that every frozen food case in the country has boxes of Pepperidge Farms puff pastry. It's a decent enough product, and when used to wrap up a filling this delicious, no one with any decency will complain. Just don't invite any Austrians over. Enjoy!

Click here for ingredients and transcript