Okay, I tried this on a food message board and it didn’t fly at all. I’m hoping Dopers will have some opinions.
I’ve been on a Nigella Lawson food processor danish pastry kick for the past few months. Her food processor danish pastry recipe is easy and delicious. Instead of making little individual pastries, I usually make long strudelly filled rolls, and then glaze them. I’ve done cherry, strawberry, chocolate, and poached apricot. All of them turned out fabulously.
My waistline hasn’t noticeably improved, thanks for asking.
Anyway, I was wondering about other fun possibilities for the dough, such as- what happes if you layer it a few more times into a loaf? Would it rise and bake correctly? Can I make simple cheating croissants? Would the dough make a nice flat savoury pie or galette base? I think most herbs, ham, gruyere, etc. would be nice- can you think of other fillings that would go with buttery, flaky pastry?
Give me ideas, suggestions, and tips. Paging Chefguy, Ukulele Ike, and anyone else who’s good at cooking. Has anyone else experimented with danish dough?
Hey, Lissla, for a savory one have you considered a spinach-feta filling? I saute leeks and add a little garlic, then mix with defrosted chopped spinach (you could chop up a whole bunch of fresh) and then mix in feta. I’ve made this as calzone filling - yum.
Ham and cheese sounds good too.
I’m still thinking about other sweet filling possibilities.
Not sure about the loaf thing. I would think the croissants would work. Wouldn’t be exactly the same, but seems like they’d be yummy.
I am a baker working for a supermarket in the U.K. Saw the OP and thought I might be able to help, unfortunately all of our danish pastries come in frozen and we put them in the oven while they’re still solid. We do : Vanilla, Chocolate, Cinnamon, Toffee Pecan, pretty much all the flavours there are.
One piece of advice I would offer would be to somehow introduce some kind of blast of steam into your oven before you start to bake. this will give your pastry a little extra crispness. That is if that’s what you want. Our oven does this automatically, it’s on a preset cycle. I have heard of people putting an ice cube in the bottom of the oven but not tried it myself. Anyway, good luck and happy baking!!
Right. Misting with water works, too. I’ve used the steam thing for bread, but I hadn’t thought of doing it with danishes.
Ham and cheese. Hmm. Chicken and cheese? The puff pastry potato cheddar pie thing would be too heavy for the dough, I would think. Spinach and feta. Yum.
I forgot to mention that if you decide to mix your sugars then a good ratio is 5 parts brown sugar to 1 part white sugar. Of course, you can always go by taste.
No one should ever neglect Nigella. She is totally awesome.
I have seriously paraphrased her way of doing it.
The method (and I use my beautiful, beautiful KitchenAid mixer for it, but the recipe specifies food processor) you chop the butter, flour and sugar together in the processor, dump in the wet ingredients (milk, egg, warm water), and briefly process until you’ve got a gooey sticky mess with biggish chunks of butter in it.
Stick it in the fridge overnight, then take it out a few hour in advance of when you want to make the pastry. Roll it out on a very floured board (I usually have to use at least a half cup extra flour, which is not mentioned in the recipe), fold it in on itself in thirds, and flip it sideways and repeat twice more. I guess you could do in half if you feel like rolling it a few more times.
When you want to use it you roll it out into whatever shape you want, and quite thinly, put whatever the filling is in it, and let it rise covered until doubled. Pretty standard. I bake it at 350F for about twenty minutes.
I think the standard proportions are available online. It’s something like a cup of liquid to two and a bit cups flour, and a cup of butter. It’s a little depressing if you’re doubling it to stand there beating a pound of butter into something you’re about to eat.
Oh, the dough freezes beautifully, and you can also leave it in the fridge for several days.
Elizabeth David, somewhere, has a recipe for a kind of simple croissant dough which sounds a little like yours. You could treat it like a croissant and enclose a little square do dark chocolate (which is what David wrote about), or home-made almond paste, or Nutella.
My favourite Danishes are the ones with sour cherries, you could also try some poached rhubarb or use peaches/nectarines. Berries are always good, especially raspberries.
I’m also very fond of those pastries with cream cheese in them, and I’m thinking that ricotta cheese mixed with a little sugar and some grated lemon rind would make a great Danish.
You could certainly use it as the basis for a tart, maybe use thin slices of apple, dust with cinnamon and cover with dots of butter (or even thick cream). Quinces would work as well (poached first in a spiced sugar syrup).
For a savoury tart I think an enriched dough would work well with caramalized onion and some goat’s cheese, or cover it with tomatoes slow-roasted in the oven, some fresh basil and a drizzle of olive oil. I make a pizza topping where the dough has a layer of cream spread over it, then I add thin slices of potato and some fresh oregano.
I don’t know about making it into a loaf, but you could cut the dough into squares and make a kind of rich, flaky dinner roll which might be nice, or spread the dough with freshly minced garlic, roll up and cut for a nice version of garlic bread.
I think the possiblities are probably almost endless.
Yummmmm…those ideas sound wonderful, blackhobyah. Just went out to look for the pastry recipe and found a recipe that includes ground toasted almonds - also sounds very good. The recipe for the danish is linked to it.