Scandinavian Baking Recipe: Basic Danish Pastry Dough
Scandinavian Baking Recipe: Bake up these flaky melt-in-your-mouth danish pastries with Trine Hahnemann's new recipe
Forget the Great British Bake Off! Sink your teeth into these gloriously flaky danish pastries.
Basic Danish Pastries
The great thing about wienerbrød is that it all comes from the same basic pastry dough, so, when you master that, you can make all the different versions. The pastry is not hard to make but it takes time and, as with a lot of things in life, the more you do it the better you will become.
INGREDIENTS
Makes 20–24 pastries
25g fresh yeast
1 egg, lightly beaten
½ tsp salt
1 tbsp caster sugar
325g 00 grade (tipo 00) flour, plus more to dust
300g cold butter, in thin slices
METHOD
Crumble the yeast into 150ml of lukewarm water, stir to dissolve, then add the egg, salt and sugar. Stir in the flour and knead the dough with your hands until it is even and light. Put it in a bowl, cover with cling film and let it rest in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes.
Roll out the dough on a lightly floured work surface into a rough 45cm square. Arrange a square of butter in the centre at a 45° angle to the corners of the dough, so it forms a smaller diamond inside the pastry square. Fold the corners of the pastry over the butter to encase it fully and seal the joins well. Roll out the dough again carefully, this time into a rectangle, making sure that it does not crack and expose the butter.
Then fold a short end one-third over into the centre, and the other short end over that: you are folding the rectangle into three, as you would a business letter. Wrap in cling film and rest once more in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.
Repeat this rolling and folding procedure three times in total, remembering to let the dough rest for 15 minutes in the refrigerator between each. Now the dough is ready to make any 'Danish'.
Recipe extracted from Scandinavian Baking by Trine Hahnneman (Quadrille Publishing, Hardback £25)
