Is making danish pastry dough really hard to do?

Save yourself the headaches and use frozen puff pastry sheets. Already pre made and super easy. Find them in your grocery freezer aisle.

Once you get the hang of them, experiment with fillings, then learn from scratch.

Hi GCG,

I wish I had all of my cookbooks out of storage. DH has promised that some time in the next 6 months I'll have them at hand. So...I don't have the Danish recipe you're looking for, but can tell you that it's labor intensive. Also, using puff pastry is great for strudel and Napoleons, but doesn't quite cut it for me when it comes to Danish (which has all that buttery goodness!). I hope someone will provide you with a recipe.

Like you, I LOVE Danish and have since I was a kid. Some days after school if I had a bit of allowance to spend, I would walk to the neighborhood bakery and buy a Danish. That was my after school treat. All my friends thought I was nuts.

Today I had to go to the dentist about a tooth way in the back that was sort of bothering me. Lo and behold he finds a little infection in the gum next to the tooth, so had to dig around and stuff. I had another dr appt and wondered what I could eat with half my mouth numb and found a Danish in the cafe of the Medical Office Bldg. Yea for Danish! (Cause I can't eat yogurt and my migraine needed something sweet.)

Good luck!

I looked into this some time ago and decided it was something I'd rather buy. It was extremely labor intensive. If you want to try it, look for videos on YouTube. I found several.

Snowpuppy your reply kind of cracked me up, it was funny. I had no idea it was something really labor intensive, shoot.......yeah I can try the puff pastry dough, hadn't even thought of that. Thanks

sfnative they are delicious, aren't they...sorry to hear about your tooth. Going to the dentist is never any fun. I dread going there, I'd rather do anything but that.

housecat, thanks for the advice, I think I'm either visiting the bakery or doing the puff pastry thing. Oh well...

That is a good point, puff pastry sheets and danish pastry layers are not exactly alike.

If you have an ethnic grocer in your area I would scout them out first. If not then give a try with what they offer locally. Experiment with fillings. As one poster mentioned youtube could offer some real tips on assembly.

Being an accomplished baker is no different than any other skill. And the pride you get from putting something on the table that is baked from the heart is so satisfying!

There was a thread a while back about kringles (which are kind of like a big danish). Someone said it takes 72 hours to make the dough!

Beatrice Ojakangas was on a Julia Child PBS show making her Danish Pastry. It is called Quick Method Danish Pastry. (Viennabrod) I have made the dough and it works and makes wonderful Danish.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWTFTVfe2h0 shows how she makes the dough.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phb2Ku-KY6M shows how to shape the dough.

She has a cookbook called The Great Scandinavian Baking Book recipe is on page 218.

Your local library may have the book. I got mine from Amazon.

If you do a search the recipe will probably come up. You will need a food processor to make the dough.

I used to make it as a teen ager and I don't think it's hard at all. There are some tricks, but mainly, you are spreading softened butter on sweet yeast dough and rolling it to layer the butter and dough to make the flaky layers.

One thing I found out is that you can over handle it and then it gets tough. And chilling it a bit before forming it into your ring or pastries works well.

I used to make a ring coffee cake that had fluted petals, made by cutting slits around the ring and then twisting out each partial slice to reveal the filling rolled inside.

The best book on the subject (my usual reference) is Baking and Pastry by the C.I.A. and it has a chapter on "laminated dough" which is the culinary term for danish pastry, puff paste and any doughs layered to make flakes.