As ubiquitous as this style of Danish is, it’s one of the more complex to make. I learned to make them putting in an extra fold and layer of buttercream. That makes the end product both richer (of course) and flakier. If you’d rather not do that part (though it’s a nice way to use […]
READ ONThis is a slightly different “envelope” than the one I talked about in the cheese Danish post. It isn’t my best shape, I’m baker enough to admit that. However never let it be said I didn’t show you every Danish I know how to make. Most of the time when you see these they’re filled […]
READ ONRemember the Danish cartoon flap from a couple of years ago? When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a series of cartoons satirizing Muhammad? At the height of the furor, a number of Iranian groups, including the Iranian confectioners’ union, demanded that Muslims stop calling Danishes “Danishes”, substituting the term “Roses of the Prophet Muhammad”. Though […]
READ ONA couple of you have been asking why it is, since layered doughs are the very foundation of the pastry arts, we don’t see more of the kind of instruction I’ve put up this week in cookbooks and on TV. The only answer I have is that the people who produce TV shows and write […]
READ ONThe other great innovation that northern Europeans, specifically the Viennese, brought to layered pastry was yeast. Both croissant dough and Danish (two of the four main layered doughs, the others being flaky pastry and puff pastry) call for it. That may seem a little odd since as I mentioned, layered doughs already employ steam power, […]
READ ONCall me crazy, but when somebody offers me a pastry called a “bear claw”, I actually expect to see something that looks, at least a little, like a bear’s claw. Hence my years of confusion going into doughnut shops and encountering amorphous blobs of fried dough that bore the name. I swear to you I […]
READ ONGot this question in from a reader last evening: Joe, I thought you said Arabs invented pastry, now you say it was the Viennese? Please explain. Actually I guess it’s more of a directive than a question, but I’m happy to oblige either way. The northern European contribution to the pastry arts can be summed […]
READ ONHere’s another very simple one that anyone can do in the comfort of their own living room: the pinwheel. As with the cheese Danish, start by rolling out about a pound and a half of dough into a rectangle about a quarter inch thick (the exactly dimensions aren’t important. Starting with a rough square… …cut […]
READ ON…European, and especially French, pâtissiers have a few secret weapons up their collective sleeve when it comes to pastry making: specialty butters. Which is to say, ultra high-fat butters made for specific applications. Buerre pâtissier is one of these, made speciifically for layered doughs like Danish pastry and croissant. For reasons I’ll get into a […]
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