Weinerbrod: How Danes Say Pastry
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| Open-face Danish Pastry |
But first, let me explain the inspiration for why things are a bit different in this post. It stems from the fact that this past week I had the pleasure of interacting with some real Danes here in Canada. Yes, indeed! I travelled all the way to the Royal Danish Embassy in Ottawa to get a new GPS tracking chip implanted in the base of my cerebral cortex. I don't know if the Danish embassy is considered Danish territory or not, but I left there feeling strangely happy - it was like I had just set foot in a little slice of Denmark, the happiest country in the world - and as I wandered away through Ottawa's Byward Market I was accutely aware of my own semi Danish-ness.
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| Proud to be Danish... |
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| Yuck! So-called American "Danish" |
For anybody who has lived in a cave all their life, a Danish (in Canada and the USA at least) is a sort of pastry-like substance - a justifiably maligned dessert, often disgustingly cheese-filled or maybe adorned with an apricot or some bloated sultana raisins. They are the kind of thing you find in gas station convenience stores along side greasy-looking Mae Wests, Ding Dongs and other gnarly cake-like horror shows. These Danishes are never good and have probably done more harm to the fine reputation of the Kingdom of Denmark than any other thing. Here's what I've always wondered: why doesn't the Danish Trade Commission do something about this terrible abuse of their intellectual property!
Actually, it begs a more important question: why are these bland, doughy things called Danishes anyway? I don't actually know the true history of the name in the USA, nor did I feel like figuring it out, but I can tell you that Denmark does in fact have a rich tradition of creating wonderfully delicious buttery puff pastry confections. So the name isn't totally random to me - it even makes sense a bit if you've ever been to Denmark and seen the many pastry wonders with your own eyes. Sadly, the execution on my side of the Atlantic is rarely what it should be.
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| Professional Weinerbrød Pastry: from Lagekagehuset in Copenhagen |
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| Note any similarities? Viennese bakers did! |
So where does one go in Denmark if one wants to buy weinerbrød? One goes to a place called a konditori, and one can locate these heavenly dens of pastry delights at a distance from their easy to spot symbols. To the untrained eye, these symbols look like unsalted Bavarian pretzels, but don't be fooled, they lead to a haven that offers so much more than dry, salty bread snacks.
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I know it looks like a pretzel, but in Denmark it means pastry! |
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| Inside the konditori - So many delicious choices! |
The process is a bit time-consuming and sometimes finicky, but it is not particularly hard. It involves five basic processes:
- Making a yeast dough
- Rolling and turning to create dozens of buttery layers of pastry dough
- Shaping and rising
- Baking
- Finishing and eating
Making yeast dough
Let's start with making the yeast dough. Here what you need to do for 12 spandauers.
Let's start with making the yeast dough. Here what you need to do for 12 spandauers.
- 1 TBSP dry yeast
- 1/4 cup warm water
- 1/2 TBSP sugar
- 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1 TBSP Sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup warm milk
Let the dough rise in a clean, covered bowl until it doubles in volume (about 1-2 hours depending on the room temperature).
Once the dough has risen, turn it out onto a sheet of wax paper and flatten it out. You then need to chill it for about 20 minutes. Chilling and resting the dough is something you do over and over when making pastry. It helps to relax the gluten, making it possible to roll out the dough, which would otherwise be tougher to roll than a two-dollar steak.
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| Once the dough is ready, flatten it out. |
The next major step in the process involves adding butter to the yeast dough. You do this in a process of rolling and turning so that you create a laminate of alternating butter-dough layers. This, when baked, creates the separated layers of flaky pastry typical in great Danish weinerbrød. Here's what to do:
Take 1 1/2 sticks of cold unsalted butter and hammer it down with your roller into a flat, square disk about 15 cm wide. Hammering the butter makes it malleable, even when cold, which is needed if you hope to roll it out into dozens of micro-thin layers. You need to do this quickly, as you do not want to let the butter warm up.
Note: Make sure you keep the surfaces well floured to keep dough from sticking to either the board or the rolling pin.
Next, you wrap the butter inside the dough, making an envelope to completely enclose the butter, and then using a rolling pin, roll the package out in one direction until it is about 3 times longer. Once complete, fold the ends over into three layers (like folding a letter), turn the dough 90 degrees, and roll out again until it reach the same 3x length. Fold in three again.
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| 1) Flatten butter 2) Put butter in a dough envelope 3) Roll it out 4) Fold it in 3 and repeat |
You can then repeat the process. In other words: roll it out, fold it, turn it 90 degrees, roll it out, fold and refrigerate about 2 hours. At this point, your laminated dough is done. Afterwards comes the part where you prepare the actual individual pastry delights.
Making the pastry
After the dough has rested, you can roll it out to a sheet about 15 cm x 50 cm then cut it in half (into two 15x25cm pieces). Refrigerate one piece while you work on the other. You can trim the uneven edges to get something that is more evenly rectangular.
(Don't forget: you'll need to repeat this part of the recipe on the other half of the dough as well)
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Roll out finished dough and cut in half |
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| After cutting, you can see all the layers. Count them if you can! |
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| Cut like so... |
Turn the dough and roll it out until its about 60cm x 30cm, then cut the dough into 6 square pieces that are 15x15 cm each. From these pieces I like to round out the edges using a cookie cutter or a knife. This gives the finished pastries a nice rippled edge, but you can simply use the square pieces as is.
Frankly, not being a pastry chef, I find this part fraught with peril. It's important to get the dough rolled out to the right thickness to produced the desired puff effect. To thin, and you end up with a cracker. Too thick, and you get a huge puffy undercooked blob. Somewhere between half and one centimetre thick seems to be the right thickness to aim for. (If any reader has advise on how to get this right each time, please let me know. I will happily update the recipe).
Once rolled out, you then shape the dough by pinching up all the edges in towards the centre, making a "bowl" that can eventually hold the fruit preserves. More on this in a moment.
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Shape the pastries and let them rise |
Baking the pastry
Place six shaped pastries on a paper-lined baking sheet and leave them to rise for about 1 hour. If you like, you can paint the pastries with an egg wash after they've risen, but I usually skip this part. You can also add a dollop of fruit preserve at this point, but I like to wait until right after baking. Place the baking sheet in the oven pre-heated to 475 F and bake for 11-12 minutes (watch them closely towards to end to make sure they are not burning).
Finishing and eating the pastry
The moment that you remove the pastries from the oven, place a generous dollop of room temperature fruit preserves (strawberry or raspberry are ideal) in the centre of each pastry. I find that there is still enough heat at this point to "melt" the preserves evenly over the spandauer. Remove each of the pastries from the baking sheet and allow to cool thoroughly on a wire rack.
Once cool, drizzle a simple icing made from powdered sugar with a few drops of water or lemon juice on the pastry (for the icing, you want a consistency that is fluid without being runny). Now, you are ready to enjoy your marvellous creations. I find that it's best enjoyed with coffee and friends and family.
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| Bake until flaky and golden |
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