Danish pastry

Danish pastry

A typical Danish of Spandauer-type with apple filling and glazing
Type	Sweet bread
Place of origin	Denmark
Main ingredients	Wheat flour, butter, milk, eggs, yeast.

A Danish pastry or Danish, as it also is called in the United States, is a multilayered pasty in the viennoiserie pastry tradition of Vienna. It originated in Denmark and has become a Danish specialty. Like other viennoiserie pastries, such as croissants, Danish pastry is made of laminated yeast-leavened doughs, creating a layered texture similar to a puff pastry. Danish pastries were exported by immigrants to the United States, and today are popular around the world.

Terminology

In Danish and all other Scandinavian languages, the term for Danish pastry is wienerbrød, "Viennese bread". The same etymology is also the origin of the Finnish viieneri.

Danish pastry is referred to as facturas in some Spanish speaking countries. In Vienna, the Danish pastry, referring to Denmark and Copenhagen, is called Kopenhagener Plunder or Dänischer Plunder.

History

A cinnamon Danish with chocolate from a bakery in Denmark

The origin of the Danish pastry is often ascribed to a strike amongst bakery workers in Denmark in 1850. The strike forced bakery owners to hire workers from abroad, among them several Austrian bakers, who brought along their own baking traditions and pastry recipes, thitherto unfamiliar to Denmark. The Austrian pastry of Plundergebäck, soon became popular in Denmark and after the labour disputes ended, Danish bakers adopted the Austrian recipes, adjusting them to their own liking and traditions by increasing the amount of egg and fat for example. This development resulted in what is now known as the Danish pastry.

One of the baking techniques and traditions that the Austrian bakers brought with them was the Viennese lamination technique. Due to such novelties the Danes called the pastry tecnique "wienerbrød" and, as mentioned above, that name is still in use in Northern Europe today. At that time, almost all baked goods in Denmark were given exotic names.

History of the Danish in the United States

A slice of a US apple crumb Danish

To the United States the pastry came with the immigrants. Lauritz C. Klitteng of Læsø, Denmark, popularized "Danish pastry" in the United States in 1915–1920. According to Klitteng the Danish was what that he baked for the wedding of President Woodrow Wilson in December 1915. Klitteng toured the world to promote his product and was featured in such 1920s periodicals as the National Baker, the Bakers' Helper, and the Bakers' Weekly. Klitteng briefly has his own Danish Culinary Studio at 146 Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Herman Gertner owned a chain of New York City restaurants and had brought Klitteng to New York to sell Danish pastry. Gertner's obituary appeared in the January 23, 1962 New York Times:

"At one point during his career Mr. Gertner befriended a Danish baker who convinced him that Danish pastry might be well received in New York. Mr. Gertner began serving the pastry in his restaurant and it immediately was a success."

Composition

The ingredients include flour, yeast, milk, eggs, and copious amounts of butter or margarine.

Butter is the traditional fat used in Danish pastry.

In industrial production, other fats are also commonly used, such as hydrogenated sunflower oil (known as "pastry fat" in the UK). A yeast dough is rolled out thinly, covered with thin slices of butter between the layers of dough, and then the dough is folded and rolled again and again into numerous layers. If necessary, the dough is chilled to ease handling. The process of rolling, buttering, folding and chilling is repeated multiple times to create a many-layered dough that, once baked, is fluffy, crispy on the outside, buttery and flaky.

Varieties

A slice of a kringle with remonce, a type of Danish pastry common in Denmark

Danish pastries as consumed in Denmark have different shapes and names. Some are topped with chocolate, pearl sugar, glacé icing and/or slivered nuts and may be stuffed with a variety of ingredients such as jam or preserves (usually apple or prune), remonce, marzipan and/or custard. Shapes are numerous, including circles with filling in the middle (known in Denmark as "Spandauer's"), figure-eights, spirals (known as snails), and the pretzel-like kringles.

In Sweden Danish pastry is typically made with layers of dough placed flat and topped with vanilla custard. Other varieties are so called längder, that is flat loaves.

In the UK, various ingredients such as jam, custard, apricots, raisins, flaked almonds, pecans or caramelized toffee are placed on or within sections of divided dough, which is then baked. Cardamom is often added to increase the aromatic sense of sweetness.

In the US, Danishes are typically given a variety of fruit toppings or sweet bakers' cheese topping prior to baking. Danishes with nuts on them are also popular there and in Sweden, where choclate spritzing and powdered sugar also often are added.

In Argentina, they are usually filled with dulce de leche or dulce de membrillo.

• Danish pastry in different countries
• 
  Several types of Danish pastry along with other baked goods in a bakery in Århus in Denmark
• 
  Pecan and maple Danish from France
• 
  Argentinian facturas with dulce de membrillo
• 
  Danish pastries in the Philippines

See also

• Kringle (Kringel)
• Danish cookie
• Danish cuisine
• List of pastries
• Pan dulce (sweet bread)
• Pastry
• Doughnut

External links

• Danish Pastry from food historian Barry Popik
• Danish pastry - base recipe - Danish pastry bar Kvalifood, a non-commercial educational cooking website from Denmark.
• BBC Danish pastries
• Danish