Did you know that a standard danish has 243 layers?
That’s right ladies and gentlemen. 273 layers of delicious dense and chewy yet still light and fluffy puffiness that comes from 5 single turns.
Today I put myself to the challenge of making some danishes. (Or rather, one huge danish that I wasn’t expecting to get so huge.)
The process itself is fairly easy and fun. The dough was easy to work with and it tastes pretty frigging good if I may say so myself.
I started the morning by measuring all the ingredients and putting them in the fridge to get cold. Including the flour, but not the yeast.
Then I dissolved the yeast in the cold liquid. Oh you bet you read that right! In the COLD liquid. Not warm. Cold. Ever had someone tell you yeast won’t rise in cold liquid? They were lying to you. It will, it just takes longer than if it were in warm liquid.
Then I mixed everything together until I had a nice soft sticky dough. I put the margarine block inside. Another weird thing, margarine. You might be wondering why margarine is used instead of butter, and I wondered that too. Until I read the little blurb in the book* I was using that says: “margarine is used for this dough because it produces a lighter and flakier texture than butter. Also, because the fat and the dough need to be at the same consistency to give the best layered structure and margarine has a higher melting point than butter, margarine is preferable with such a soft dough.”
*The book, I think I may have mentioned before, is The Professional Pastry Chef by Bo Friberg Fundamentals of Baking and Pastry, 4th edition. I love this book SO SO SO much. I have never been disappointed by a recipe and there isn’t any useless part of this book. I have read every page of information and learned so much. It’s definitely worth the money.
If you have wanted to make your own danish or danishes, don’t be afraid! It’s fairly easy and will turn out wonderfully if you follow the recipe (:
Here is the recipe I used (small batch, because I didn’t need 12 pounds and 8 ounces of dough!)
Danish Pastry Dough: small batch (From The Professional Pastry Chef)
1 1/3 cups of cold whole milk
3 large eggs
1 pound and 6 ounces of margarine (I used a store brand of hard margarine. The ones that are packaged like butter.)
1 ounce of active dry yeast OR 2 ounces of fresh compressed yeast
2 ounces of sugar
1 teaspoon of salt (adjust accordingly to the salt content of your margarine. If it’s high in sodium, lessen it to 1/2 or 1.4 tsp. You can even eliminate it all together if you are worried about a salty dough. I left the salt in and found no adverse affects.)
1 tsp cardamom (I left this out mainly because I absolutely despise cardamom)
1 pound and 6 ounces of bread flour
- Mix the milk and the eggs, then refrigerate the mixture, and the flour, for at least 1 hour before making the dough.
- Shape the cold margarine into a 5 inch block and place in the refrigerator until needed.
- Dissolve the yeast in the milk and egg mixture. Use your hand to speed this up since yeast dissolves slowly in cold liquid. Stir in the sugar, salt and cardamom. Reserve a handfull of the flour and mix the rest in until a soft sticky dough is made, using the reserved flour as needed.
- Place the dough on a floured table and shape it into a 7 inch square. Place the butter block on it diagonally so you see 4 dough triangles are showing. Fold in the triangles toward the centre and seal in the margarine.
- Roll the dough as carefully and evenly as possible into a rectangle measuring 12″x8″. Use as much flour as you need to prevent sticking.
- Give the dough a single turn (fold it like a letter. one third into the middle, and the last third on top of that) Cover and place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
- Roll the dough to the same size and give it three additional single turns, resting the dough for 30 minutes in the fridge between each turn.
- Roll the dough out to about 1/2″ thick, cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for about 30 minutes.
- Do whatever you want with the dough! Read below to find out what I did with mine.
Cherry Danish
- Roll the danish dough to about the size of a half sheet pan. (rolling on the actual the pan lined with a silpat is easiest.)
- Cut 1/4″ strips about the length of your middle finger all down the long sides of the dough.
- Spread your filling in the middle but don’t get too close to the ends or sides.
- Bring up the cut strips into the middle so that the strips from opposite sides are overlapping, locking them in place and are sort of hiding the cherry filling.
- Sprinkle with coarse sugar, and bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for 35-40 minutes, turning the sheet around halfway through baking.
- When the pastry is done, take it out of the oven and brush with with simple syrup all over.
- Then drizzle on a simple icing made of icing sugar and water and some flavourings. Almond and vanilla work well with cherry (:
- Eat it and enjoy it!!!










