A Lángos Love Story
I learned about lángos, not in its home country but, during a volunteer experience in Slovakia. It’s one of the ultimate street foods and as a young, party-going guy, the lángos stand near my place was a frequent hotspot among my friends. During my time there, I had both an angel and a devil on my shoulder, both of Hungarian extraction, whispering in each ear about the perceived quality of this particular lángos stand. One, somebody who to this day remains one of my best friends, was very supportive of me discovering her native cuisine (even in the guise of a neighbour’s interpretation.) The other told me that I “shouldn’t eat this dry little dog biscuit of grease. Real lángos should be fluffy like a cloud.”
“I had both an angel and a devil on my shoulder, both of Hungarian extraction, whispering in each ear about the perceived quality of this particular lángos stand.”
The ‘dry little dog biscuit’ was perhaps flatter than many other lángos, but it was still a revelation to me. The idea of fried savoury dough covered in sour cream, cheese and a fiery, breath destroying garlic oil was not something that could be ignored. Without the facilities to cook them for ourselves, this was the option. A cheap, satisfying and life-affirming option! The doughnut for the savoury minded, in fact.
I’ve never found a lángos anywhere else I’ve lived. The closest was on the Cambridge street food market I sometimes visit when in the UK. That means, to enjoy something I never intend to give up or enjoy solely as a holiday food, I must make it myself…
Still, I am quite averse to deep-frying things. I don’t have a fryer, I don’t like the cleanup and I don’t like all the waste oil! But luckily, lángos does quite well in a ‘medium frying’ kind of environment. And being something that is mostly bread dough, it can be thrown together even when the fridge is bare and the shop is far! All it takes is a bit of my favourite virtue (patience, for you new readers.)
But before I teach you the secrets of this very staple, very simple food. I’d love to give you the run-down.
“Lángos is a testament to the ingenuity, indomitability, and innovation of our Hungarian cousins.”
I found it very curious when I discovered that lángos comes from the Hungarian word for ‘flame’ because formerly it was baked in the heating or cooling bread oven. Though I’m sure this was also delicious, like most breads, it seems the antithesis of what a lángos is in the 21st century! The best part is the crackling fried crust that blisters around the edges and yields to the wet toppings in the middle. This is a snack that firmly rests in the fried category in my mind, thus it will stay. The original lángos, furthermore, was a breakfast. Even my strong Saxon composure for greasy, fried breakfasts would be tested a little with the time, effort and extravagance of this. It seems, somewhere in history, lángos didn’t just evolve but changed drastically. Partially aligned with the rapid modernisation of European households, we can actually blame politics for this particular change, specifically the communists. And isn’t it a massive surprise that even one tiny good thing came out of that atrocious period of history? “When needs must,” as the saying goes. Lángos is a testament to the ingenuity, indomitability, and innovation of our Hungarian cousins. Indeed, without veering too far off into politics, I know I shall be raising my lángos to them and to continued better days! While much of the information is elusive or in Hungarian, with the help of Wikipedia, translate and various other little sources, I’ve managed to put the story together thus:
Because of the prevalence of canteen eating (just as in the Polish Milk Bar) and industrially produced loaves, the previous practice of weekly baking disappeared. No baking… no lángos. However, due to the revolution in 1956, some liberalisation took place during the ’60s and small lángos businesses began to open. This required an innovative method to avoid enormous fuel costs for a brick oven. The prevalent method of cooking lángos now seems to be in a large flat pan of boiling oil where they float like small rafts on a sea of fat. A rather ugly sounding description of a beautiful looking thing! During the ’80s the addition of sour cream and cheese became common on the previously ‘plain’ garlic-basted lángos. Thus the familiar snack was born. This is exactly how I ate it in Slovakia, exactly how I eat it at every stall, and pretty much how I make it at home. The only real difference is that I tend to dust mine with spicy paprika, some dill and I often alter the cheese to suit my mood and fridge.
But how do we make fluffy, cloud-like lángos?
The only secret is the dough — this being about 90% of the actual finished product. Before my time working in Italy and learning how to make pasta and bread dough from actual experts, I always tended to make dough that was too dry — this makes handling it much more pleasurable — I even recall baking what amounted to a wheaten rock at my university house. Bad memories!
I have repented and realised that the stickiness of the dough is an important factor in creating a light, airy product. Indeed, most things I bake now however around 70% hydration. I’ll cover this in more depth soon. But for the rough guide, when baking we count the weight of the flour as 100% and measure percentages of that for the other ingredients. I’m going to illustrate that with the recipe for this dough. This leads to something that gets all over your hands, impractical but totally worth it! The other major secret is in the kneading and resting
But lángos is substantially smoother and softer than most breads. There is a simple reason for this, it usually contains something to block the formation of the gluten we just talked about. We want a mixture of softness and structure and that is where practice makes perfect. It is hard to understand dough — that peculiar mixture of cereal and liquid — without working with it. It’s like playing an instrument, you just ‘do’ it, you know when the texture is right from having tried it a few times. That certainly doesn't mean you need to knead for an eternity, though. It doesn’t take long at all to come to grips with the right feeling, the dough should be tacky and flowing, it should move like a relentless but very lazy blob. As the gluten relaxes the ball will spread and it will fill with air. In fact, lángos dough turns out very much like soft, easily worked pizza dough that can be pressed into a nice flat circle.
To know whether the dough is ready to bake, the old adage ‘doubled in size’ is a great primer. If the dough has grown considerably, and there are bubbles under the surface and if you pick it up you see a ‘bready’ texture, it's probably ready to be shaped. This means dividing into equal pieces and rolling into balls. The balls can then have a few minutes to relax before being squashed and pressed with the fingers into disks that end up the size of smallish plates. If the dough is very slowly reforming when pressed then it is ready. If it springs back quickly it needs more time, if it completely squashes it has probably been enjoying its R&R for a little too long.
I then fry the dough in a large wok with sunflower oil that comes about halfway up the side of the dough. I flip and reflipping until it is golden, crisp, puffy and cooked through, usually around 5 mins. There is nothing worse than soggy, cold, fried food, which means lángos has a very limited shelflife! So before frying, set up a nice workstation with your toppings and top the lángos immediate by brushing with garlic oil, sour cream and cheese or whatever else you please, really. Eat immediately (then fry another one, because you will probably want to. Repeat… continually…)
