Hungarian · Bread
Lángos
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, aromatics blooming from the first bite, with a bitter-edged char at the rim.
Ingredients
- 500 g plain flour
- 250 g floury potato, boiled, riced and cooled
- 250 ml lukewarm milk
- 7 g dried yeast
- 10 g caster sugar
- 12 g fine salt
- 1 litre sunflower oil, for frying
- 4 garlic cloves, crushed into 100 ml warm salted water
- 250 g tejföl (20 percent sour cream)
- 200 g mild semi-hard cheese, coarsely grated
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
Salted water & the float testProofing: the rise before the oven
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Whisk the yeast and sugar into the lukewarm milk and leave until the surface domes and foams.
- Work in the riced potato, flour and salt to a soft tacky dough that slaps the bowl but pulls away clean, then cover and leave until doubled and slack.
- Divide into eight, flatten each on an oiled palm and stretch from the centre outward until the middle is almost translucent and the rim stays thick.
- Slide into 180C (355F) oil and fry until the underside is blistered deep gold, then turn once.
- Brush the hot surface with the garlic water, spread with sour cream and cover with cheese.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Proofing: the rise before the oven 78 recipes
- Judged on volume against the container rather than on the clock: visibly grown, and grown by roughly the amount the recipe describes.
- The poke test agrees: a floured fingertip pressed a centimetre in leaves a dent that springs back slowly and only part of the way. Straight back means it is not ready; no spring at all means it has gone.
- The surface is domed, smooth, and slightly sheened: not cratered, wrinkled, or collapsed, and not skinned over and dry from proofing uncovered.
- Handled, it feels alive and airy: light for its size, with bubbles visible under the skin.
- It springs in the oven: the piece lifts in the first minutes and the scores open. A shape that does not move at all was proofed past its point before it went in.
Where it goes wrong It was proofed to the clock in a kitchen colder or warmer than the recipe assumed: overproofed, it collapses as the blade touches it and bakes flat and dense with a sour edge; underproofed, it tears at the side and bakes tight.
Salted water & the float test 188 recipes
- The water was salted before anything went in, and tasting it confirms it: seasoned on the tongue, with the salt dissolved rather than sitting on the pot floor.
- There is enough water, hot enough, that the pot returns to its boil quickly after the food goes in and never stops moving.
- Where the dish uses the float as its signal, the signal is obeyed: the pieces rise and they come out then, not several minutes later once something else was finished.
- Nothing is stuck to the bottom of the pot or welded to itself, and the water has not thickened into a cloudy sludge.
- Drained on a bite rather than on the clock: resistance at the centre, with no chalky raw core.
Where it goes wrong The pot was too small and the water unsalted, so it never recovered its boil: the food sat in slack water, went gummy at the surface, and comes out bland in a way that no sauce afterwards can fix.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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