Monday, January 08, 2007

Danish Braid


Danish Braid
Originally uploaded by watchjennybake.
This was my first foray into breakfast pastries!! I have been wanting to attempt something like this for over a year but every time I would wake up one morning and think "pastries would be nice today" it would already be too late. But this time I thought ahead.

The recipe I used comes from Baking with Julia, and I feel as if it is too complicated and long to replicate here. But please, go and buy the book or check it out of the library. (I also like it because some of the recipes are written just like she is talking to you, with sentences like "If you're feeling brave...."

The recipe uses the danish pastry dough at the front of the book, which is used in several different recipes. The dough has butter that the baker is instructed to leave in big chunks, and you can see it throughout the process. It has to be mixed, then chilled, then rolled out in several stages, including folding the dough like an envelope in between rollings.

This danish braid used half of one recipe of the pastry dough, and also includes a confectioner's cream (using the microwave, which is much quicker than what I've done before in a mixer) and fruit jam. I used fruit-only raspberry jam instead of making one from scratch, and it worked out great.

After the pastry was braided, it was left to get a little puffy. After it came out of the oven, I glazed it with a coffee glaze.

This was delicious and definitely worth the work. I still have half the dough to use, and next time I'll just make the dough sometime during the week and have it ready to use on a weekend morning.

Categories: Breakfast, Danish, Pastry

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