Daring Bakers, June: Danish Braid

There's that logo again, that's right, it's . . . the Daring Bakers' monthly project!

In short, at the beginning of the month, the host(s) for the month assign a secret baking recipe to the DBers, and at the end of the month, all the DBers reveal their results! This month, Kelly and Ben assigned Danish Braids with whatever filling we chose. (Please click on their links for the recipe.)


I chose to go with an apple date combo and chocolate!


This wasn't my first time making danish. In fact, the first cooking class I ever took was in laminated dough. At that point, I still wasn't totally enamored with cooking and baking, especially baking. In fact, baking kinda terrified me. So I decided to jump in head first and take the most challenging class I could find. I was so pleased with the results! In fact, danish became and remains one of my favorite things to make! The danish braid forms I learned to make were different; this project had bakers physically braid the dough, where the form I learned earlier was more of a twist.

The start was the same, though:


And the next step just followed a logical course:


Filled and braided:


Apple:


Chocolate (like pain au chocolat . . . mmm):


Overall, I was very happy with this project! The dough was a bit stiffer, and the recipe didn't talk about sealing the butter block into the detrempe (which I thought was odd). In class, we made our butter blocks on parchment and let them set in the fridge just for a short time before laying them into the detrempe, then sealed the block in to make sure it wouldn't ooze out during rolling. We paid special attention to how firm the butter felt before rolling it out after resting--if it was too soft, it might ooze out, and if it was too firm, it might tear the dough. I worked this dough intuitively, and it worked out well. For some reason, this dough didn't rise in the fridge as much as the dough I usually use. I'm really relieved it rose during proofing! The taste is definitely comparable! The essential cardamom and orange zest made that unmistakable danish taste, and the flaky, buttery pastry was just about as good as it gets.