The origin of the Danish pastry can be dated back to 1850 and has been ascribed to a strike by the Danish bakery workers. The ingredients of the pastry are fairly simple and include yeast, flour, milk, butter and eggs. The procedure involves making thin rolls of yeast dough and coating it with butter. Subsequently, it is folded into layers.
Handling can be made easier by chilling the dough. The process of buttering, chilling, folding and rolling is repeated several times. This results in a dough that is flaky, fluffy and buttery. Sometimes hydrogenated sunflower oil is also used as a substitute or addition in butter.
In UK, this is more popularly known as pastry fat. In Denmark, it is topped with sugar, chocolate and icing and may be stuffed with marzipan, custard or jam. It is also available in a variety of shapes such as spirals, filled circles, pretzel-like kringles and figure-eight. The circles and spirals are more commonly referred to as Spandauers and snails. In United States, sweet bakers’ cheese, nut fillings and fruits topping is usually given prior to the baking. In UK, cardamom is usually added so as to increase the sweetness of the pastry. Items such as raisins, custard, jam, apricots, caramelized toffee, pecans, flaked almonds are used in the pastry. These could either be placed inside the pastry or on top of it.
The Danish pastry is very popular and detailed recipe can be found by a simple search on any of the popular search engines. The credit of popularizing the Danish pastry is given to L. C. Klitteng during the period of 1915-1920. The Danish pastry was one of the items that Klitteng baked for the wedding of the US President Woodrow Wilson. Herman Gertner was the owner of a chain of restaurants in New York and introduced the Danish pastry in his restaurants with the help of Klitteng. The Danish pastry was well received by the customers of these restaurants and has since then become one of the most popular items even in the US.
