Around the world with štrukli

“Handmade, oven-baked, and forever a part of our story.”

This is not just another advertising slogan, behind these words stands more than half a century of tradition, and more than three decades of personal commitment are woven into this story of a dish, which is difficult to say whether it is an appetizer, main course or dessert.

Namely, the famous štrukli - baked salted roll filled with cheese - have been served continuously at the Esplanade Hotel since 1951. Pastry chef Mirjana Špoljar has been making them for 30 years, since she came to this five star Zagreb hotel for an internship as a seventeen-year-old pastry apprentice.

"I was at the Esplanade's 70th anniversary celebration and here I am, at the 100th," she tells me while in the pastry section of the kitchen, she is busily preparing the ingredients for the filling in a large bowl. She kneaded the dough the day before, to let it rest well, to combine the flour, egg, oil, water and salt into a smooth mixture. With miraculous skill, she will roll it out later, on a 3 x 2 meter work surface, covered with a snow-white tablecloth. In a large bowl, she mixed a simple filling - fresh Dukat Zagreb cheese, eggs and salt.

From a tray with two oiled pieces of dough about 3 cm thick, she lifts the first one and places it on a floured work surface. Then she starts to stretch it from all sides, being careful not to break a single piece in that sheet of dough. When one end of the dough approaches the edge of the work table, she quickly moves to the other side and repeats the movements. At the same time, she is fast and energetic, gentle and careful with her work, in a way that only experienced masters, passionately devoted to their profession know how to do. For Mirjana Špoljar, it is a routine, a procedure that she repeats daily at her workplace as the pastry chef of Esplanade's kitchen, and yet - it is always a challenge.

Tears in the kitchen

She jokes along the way: “Now you see why short pastry chefs can’t do this: because they can’t reach the middle of the table!” To spread it out properly, she keeps running her hand under the flowing mass, bit by bit, until the entire work surface is covered with two-millimeter-thin dough. It really does look like a fine canvas!

“This part is very important for the dough to be thin: if you don't roll it out at first, you can't fix it later. I was 17 when I first tried to roll out the dough. I cried and kept repeating: I'll never learn to do that!” - she recalls her beginnings after completing her pastry course at the Secondary School of Catering and Hotel Management in Zagreb. But the experienced hotel pastry chef, who was about to retire, recognized her potential and didn't let her give up. She perfected various cake-making techniques, and while studying pastry, she traveled the world from Shanghai, Paris, London, Miami, Istanbul, Budapest, Singapore, Vietnam to Dubai. She learned how to prepare French, Italian and exotic desserts brilliantly, and became a three-time national champion in pastry, but she couldn't escape štrukli.

"When I came to the competition in Tokyo, they gave me a work table the size of a nightstand. So I had to stack ten of those small cabinets to get a work surface for rolling out the dough” - she tells us of the anecdotes that accompanied her.

Then she takes a bowl full of cream cheese and with a handy spatula scoops equal amounts into it and distributes them over the dough along the edge of the two longer sides. With a pastry knife, she spreads the cheese over the dough, evens out the thickness of the spread until it is uniform, about forty centimeters wide on both sides.

"We are proud that at Esplanade we always make štrukli by hand. You have seen for yourself how long the process is, how important it is for the dough to rest, that the cheese is always drained in the same way, that it has the same moisture and quality. Ever since I have been working at the Esplanade Hotel, we have always used Zagreb cheese - which is extremely important for the entire process, and also for the result" - reveals Mirjana Špoljar.

After rolling out the cheese, she cuts the dough in half so that she can roll it into two long loaves. Before doing so, she removes the excess dough hanging from the sides, rolls it around her wrist with routine movements, forms it into a ball, and sets it aside. She will use it for a strudel or some other cake.

From a folk dish to fine dining

"I hope the camera recognizes how much love I do this with" - says Mirjana as she is approaching the grand finale of rolling the štrukli. She lifts the edges of the tablecloth, rolls them gently, and the cream cheese disappears wrapped in thin layers of dough. The štrukli now looks like a long snake on the table. She repeats the same process with the other side of the dough and the cheese filling, and when she has formed two loaves three and a half meters long at the edge of the table, she takes up a new tool. She cuts the štrukli with the side of a porcelain plate with a cobalt rim and the Esplanade logo, the kind that once used to be part of the hotel inventory.

“It's a plate with a story: it greeted me when I arrived at the Esplanade Hotel 31 years ago. The plate with the gold cobalt rim was used by the VIP guests: kings, statesmen, world celebrities… When the hotel changed its plates, I kept this one for cutting štrukli and I never part with it. It has a special meaning for me, I take it with me wherever I travel and make štrukli” -says the native of Zagreb, who became the head pastry chef at the Esplanade Hotel twenty years ago.

The cut štrukli are placed in a stainless steel baking dish with a perforated bottom, so that they can be lightly steamed before baking. For large celebrations - such as the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Esplanade - they are baked in a baking dish. In hotel restaurants, they are served in a ceramic bowl, and a portion contains 2 pieces. To make the štrukli juicy, they are poured with a mixture of Dukat's whipped cream and cooking cream, and when the top side turns golden brown in the oven - they are ready to eat. From the outside, they may look like burek to some - as one respected statesman said when he ordered them at midnight when he was hungry. But when you cut them and lift the first bite with a fork, the hot creamy texture of the pulled dough and fine cheese appears. While you wait for that first bite to cool down a bit, your nostrils are filled with the childhood memories, the warmth of home and grandmother's kitchen, the forgotten taste of real cheese, without which there is no delicious cheesecake or pie, or even real štrukli.

Tones of cheese in kilometers of dough

Among the many traditional dishes of Croatian gastronomy, Esplanada's štrukli keeps a special place. They are synonymous with top quality, a traditional folk dish elevated to the level of fine dining, simplicity as the greatest art, and authenticity that comes from always the same recipe, handmade with a few fresh ingredients and, for thirty years, Dukat's Zagreb cheese.

And there is really no dilemma - whether štrukli are an appetizer, a main course or a dessert - because they can be all of these as needed, depending on the occasion, the addition of salt or sugar. Delicious and tasty, they have been on hotel menus for more than half a century, enjoyed by kings, music, film and sports stars, tourists from all over the world and local guests. Štrukli are an indispensable delicacy at all celebrations, so they were among the first to disappear from the exceptionally rich table at the magnificent celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Esplanade Hotel. Mirjana Špoljar and her pastry team sometimes make up to 1,200 pieces of them a day. It is impossible to count how many kilometers of dough she has rolled out in her life, she stopped crying about holes in the dough a long time ago and is now passing on her knowledge to new generations of pastry chefs who shed tears while making their first štrukli.

"You can do it, don't give up, this dish deserves it - I tell them what my older colleagues used to tell me. And I always remember my dad's words of encouragement whenever I was having a hard time: study and keep this job because it can bring you a lot of satisfaction, and everything you do, do it superbly!"