Bon Appetit

Finally, the last of 3… I know that last time I promised shots of the process, and used that as an excuse to why I wasn't posting the Danish recipe. I was all set up to take those pictures too. But then I realized that I had actually already done the complicated part of the recipe (not really complicated, more complicated to explain). Not that it really matters; you can see the entire thing online…

Wait, let me start at the beginning. I started watching “Baking with Julia” on PBS on Saturday mornings. Once of the PBS channels we have has a great run of cooking shows on the weekend. Julia Child is just one of many. When I saw it the first time, it was more because it amused me to be watching a Julia Child show. As I watched I imagined my mom watching it when it originally aired in the 80s.

Last week there was a fantastic show about Danish pastries (you can see it here). The woman who was baking with Julia, Beatrice Ojakangas, looked super-professional, a true baker (for example, one tell-tale sign of a baker vs. a cook is that a baker knows that when you need to pulse something is a mixer, it means that you need to have it on in short bursts, and not just let it go on the “pulse” setting for a minute. The latter is something I saw Emril do...).

Back to the Danish – there were two very impressive things that convinced me to go ahead and try the recipe. The first is that the dough looked really manageable, and didn’t require any folding of butter anywhere. The second, even more impressive is that woman made pastry cream in the microwave!

So I went ahead and made it. It was Uri’s birthday morning breakfast. I think he’s very happy I gave it a try.

So without further ado, here is the recipe:

Danish Pastry Dough

Ingredients

¼ cup warm water

1 pack (1/4 oz) active yeast

½ cup milk

1 large egg

¼ cup sugar

1 tsp salt

2.5 cups flour

2 sticks (226 grams) butter

Instructions

1. Wisk water, yeast, milk, egg, sugar and salt in a medium sized bowl

2. In a food processor fitted with a steal blade, pulse flour and butter 8-10 times. Pieces of butter should be a bit bigger than they would be if you were making shortbread

3. Gently fold flour and butter into liquid mixture to make a rough dough. Cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate 8-24 hours.

4. Dust work surface with flour, and roll out the dough, fold sides inward to make a rectangle of fairly consistent moistness (initially outside might be drier than center).

5. Roll dough out to a long rectangle. Fold in and envelop fold (left 1/3 to center, and then right 1/3 on top). Roll out lengthwise, and fold again. Repeat another 2 times, for a total of 3 rolls and folds. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 30 minutes.

6. Roll out again , cut in to equal squares, fill and let sit for 30 minutes. Brush with egg white and bake in an oven, preheated to 400 F about 10 minutes

Super easy microwave Crème Patisser

Ingredients

1 cup cream/ half & half/ milk*

1.5 tbsp cornstarch

2-3 tablespoons sugar

1 egg yolk

1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

1. In a microwave safe bowl, whisk cream, cornstarch and sugar

2. Microwave for a total of 3 minutes, stopping to re-whisk every minute. The first 2 minutes the mixture will still be very liquid, but after the third it will become thick and creamy.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk together egg yolk and vanilla. Pour 3-4 tbsp of the cream mixture into the egg, stirring vigorously and bringing the temperature of the egg mixture up (this is called tempering). Fold all of egg mixture to the rest of the cream mixture.

*If you use milk, up the cornstarch to 2 tablespoons, and you might need to also add an additional minute in the microwave.