Danish pastry - base recipe - danish pastry bar

November 22, 2012

Prep 1 hr 15 min Total 3 hr 45 min

Danish pastry and a cup of cake. © kvalifood.com

Video recipe - Danish pastry is well known and well loved all over the world. And it is very good. But you can actually make your own danish that has an even higher quality that the one you can get from danish bakers. My father in law who is a skilled baker gave me this recipe. I have changed a few things in it though. His version used a special “folding margarine” I have replaced that with real butter, and that does wonder for the taste. But no matter what, it is difficult get a better cake than danish pastry. Which we incidently call “viennese bread” in Denmark :-S

Ingredients

(3 bars or 16 pieces)

pastry dough

375 g flour
200 g milk, cold
25 g of fresh yeast or 8 g of instant yeast. I believe that to be about a tbsp full.
40 g of sugar
50 g butter
1 egg

folding butter / lamination butter

375 g butter (1 part butter to 2 parts dough (I did not say it was healthy …))

remonce

50 g butter
50 g of sugar
50 g of marzipan (homemade marzipan recipe)

egg wash

1 egg, beaten
1 tbsp water, mølk or cream whipped with egg
½ cup sugar

Directions

Remonce part #1

Mix all the ingredients for the remonce and put it aside.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bCy8x7Ht_U

The dough

Take the butter for the dough out of the fridge in good time so that it becomes soft. Or buzz it for 10-20 seconds in the microwave.

Hand kneading

Mix milk, yeast, sugar, egg and butter.

Add the flour while mixing with a spatula or your hands. Knead it for 3-4 minutes until it hangs together well and there are no dry lumps.

It is a relatively wet dough that will stick to your fingers, so it is easiest to do it in a machine.

Machine kneading

Mix all the ingredients except butter and flour.

Add 2/3 of the flour.

Add the soft butter.

When it is well incorporated into the mix add the rest of the flour

Put plenty of flour on your table to prevent the dough from sticking.

Form the dough into a ball by folding it into itself from below.

Put aside and let it rise to twice the size. ½ -1 hour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2H9S8Mv38M

Making the folding layers / laminating the dough

Put plenty of flour on the table.

Work the butter soft by continuing the below cycle

BUTTER CYCLE START

Collect all the butter into a single lump.

Flour the butter generously.

Knock it flat with your rolling pin.

BUTTER CYCLE END

Stop when the butter has the same consistency as the dough. They are to be folded together later, which is a lot easier when that do have the same consistency.

Folding of the layers

But the dough back on the floured and roll our four flaps. One from each corner.

Each flap must be the same length. And the same length as the center square.

Shape the butter lightly until it is of the same size as the middle piece.

Put the butter in the middle of the dough and fold the four flaps over the butter until it is totally enclosed.

Turn over the dough so that the flaps are against the table.

Loosely flatten the dough with your hands.

DOUGH CYCLE START

Roll the dough into a long rectangle, 1 length wide and 3 lengths long.

Fold it into 3 layers. A so-called “3 fold”.

Repeat it all two more times.

DOUGH CYCLE START

So in total it is folded:

fold (3 layers of butter)

fold (9 layers butter)

fold (27 layers of butter)

If the dough is very eleastic and continues to spring back when you roll it out, you should let it rest a cool place for 5-20 minutes between each fold. Depending on what is needed. That will make it a lot easier to work with.

If your kitchen is hot you should let the dough rest in the fridge, to prevent it from rising too much.

Final rollout

Roll out the dough to a size of 16" x 16" (40cm x 40cm). It is important to be reasonably accurate. Use some kind of measurement device.

Cut the dough into 3 strips.

Shaping the bars

Remonce part #2

Split the remoncen into 3 equal portions of 2 ounces (50 grams).

Put the remoce in the center of each strip. I usually hold it in my fist and then put it on with my thumb and forefinger. A little at a time.

Stop the remonce before you reach the end of the strip.

Final shaping

Fold the ends of the strip over remoncen.

Then fold the sides of the dough over the remonce.

Press down the dough firmly with the edge of your hand. Almost through to the table.

Brush the shaped bars with the egg wash and sprinkle liberally with sugar.

Let the bars rise to about double size. ½ -1 hour.

You can let the dough rise at room temperature. But if the temperature is high enough to melt the butter, you should put in the fridge part of the time. Otherwise the butter layers will disappear into the dough and you will get no laminiation. And that is boring!

So you should not use any “tricks” with heat to let the dough rise faster.

Convection oven: bake at 350°F (180° C) for 25-30 minutes.

Normal oven: bake at 400°F (200° C) for 25-30 minutes.

Notes

If the rolling butter is too soft or too warm when you do the folding you will push it out through the dough.

If the butter is to hard it will poke holes in the dough.

If either happens you should put on plenty of flour on the broken spot an continue rolling and folding. Then cool or rest as needed.

The mistake that is most often made when folding danish pastry is to roll it to hard, so that the butter is pressed into the dough. That will destroy the laminiation, and you will not get those flaky layers.