Danish Pastry (Weinerbrød)
Sometimes shortened to just “Danish” the popular Danish pastries are most well known for being, well, Danish! The flaky layers and fruity fillings are staples at most bakeries, but this delicate pastry wasn’t actually created in Denmark.
During the 1850’s Danish bakers went on strike and the bakery owners were left scrambling to satisfy their customers. Their solution was to recruit bakers from Austria who brought with them a new technique of pastry making, which included adding layers of butter and repeatedly folding and chilling the dough. This is called the Viennese lamination, and the resulting pastry was called wienerbrød(Vienna bread) as a nod to its origin. The resulting flaky pastries were an instant success.
Ingredients
Proof the yeast
| 3 tablespoons | Sugar |
| 1 tablespoon | Active dry yeast (or 2 teaspoons of instant yeast) |
| 2 cups | Warm water or milk (105–110°F) |
Mix the dough
| 2 tablespoons | Oil |
| 3 teaspoons | Salt |
| 5 1/2 to 6 cups | Flour |
Butter slab
| 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 sticks | Unsalted butter (if using salted, reduce salt in dough by 1 teaspoon) |
Steps
Proof the yeast:
Mix all ingredients from this section in a bowl, cover, and let sit for about 5 minutes. If your yeast is still alive, it will become foamy or frothy within a few minutes.
Mix the dough:
Start working on the dough. Start with 5 cups of flour and mix thoroughly with a dough hook; add the rest slowly until you have a good consistency (Tt should be somewhat wet or sticky to avoid a dough that springs back too much when rolling out.)
Let the dough rise:
Place dough in a covered bowl and let rise until doubled in size (roughly 1 hour). After that, punch down the dough.
Prepare the butter slab (while the dough is rising):
Roll the sticks of butter into a 12”x10” rectangle between sheets of wax paper. Chill until firm (30 minutes in the fridge works perfectly because frozen butter is problematic to roll).
Fold in the butter:
Cut the butter slab into two 6”x10” rectangles (a pizza cutter works well). Roll the dough into a 12”x24” rectangle.
Place one butter slab in the center of the dough, and fold one-third of the dough over the butter (leave a 2” border around the butter).
Place the second butter slab on top of the dough that you have just folded over the first slab, and fold the final third of the dough over this slab.
Gently roll the dough out so the dimensions are about 1x3, and fold the dough into thirds. Cover the dough, and let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. Repeat this 3 times.
At this point, we have a butter dough with 54 layers of butter (2x3x3x3) — perfect for making a variety of pastries.
Optional: You can perform one more round of rolling/folding/resting to get 162 layers, but the dough becomes quite fragile at that stage.
Form the pastries. Roll the dough out into a large square (roughly a 28” to 30” square) and cut into pieces of the desired size (a pizza cutter works great for this).
Note: It’s best to roll the dough out to the desired thickness and (total) size before cutting it into pieces. Once you cut the dough, the butter squeezes out of the edges when you try to roll it.
Baking:
Place the pastries on parchment paper on a baking sheet. Cover the pastry and let it rest for about 20 minutes.
Before baking, gently coat the pastry with an egg wash using a pastry brush and then sprinkle coarse sugar (and almond slices, depending on the style of pastry).
Bake at 350°F for about 15 to 20 min
The pastry should have a nice golden brown color when finished. Allow the pastry to completely cool before adding any icing.