This time around the challenge was a rich laminated yeast dough: The Danish Pastry braid. I’ve made both croissants and danish years ago in pastry school, but I’ve always shied away from making these at home. You see, laminated doughs and me are good friends, but once yeast joins the party and starts puffing things up in my warm kitchen, all bets are off. Adding yeast to these doughs, I’m told, makes laminating them easier. Personally I don’t find this the case and would rather do double turns of puff pastry dough until my hands fall off…but the mice are gone and I haven’t been the most productive Daring Baker so I soldiered on.

We were given some leeway with the fillings of our braid. The challenge provided a recipe for an apple filling but we were allowed to substitute anything we could think of if we wanted. Since apples are a fall fruit and it’s now just summer, I decided to come up with my own filling – blueberries and frangiapanne.

The recipe we used was pretty spot on and typical for a laminated dough. There’s lots of down-time in this recipe, but if you know what’s going on, you can cheat the rest times and save yourself at least an hour or so. I decided to make the dough and complete all the turns one day and shape, proof, and bake the braid on the following day.

It was quite surprising to see how much the dough expanded during the overnight rest in the refrigerator; it probably doubled in size. Before I rolled the dough out to its final size, I gently flattened the dough down to a more manageable size. Once it was flattened, it easily rolled out into a very large thin sheet.

The full sized braid just barely fit on my half sheet pan, but it at least fit. I was slightly worried that after proofing it would overhand the sides, but that never happened. Even with this large sized braid, I had enough scraps leftover to make a few small round danish. The scraps were cut into long, thin strips, twisted, and then coiled into circles. I made indentations in the center of each so there would be room for filling after they baked.

Both pastries proofed quickly in the early summer heat, probably less than an hour and they were doubled in size. The small danish baked off rather quick, about 10 minutes while the braid probably only took 15-18 minutes, tops.

After baking I lightly iced both pastries and filled the small danish with a strawberry compote. The recipe was pretty good. There’s a bit too much stuff in it for my liking – cardamom, orange zest, orange juice, vanilla bean, vanilla extract…One or two of these are a nice addition, but all of these together seemed to have gotten lost. I even skipped on the oranges and I still thought it was too much stuff. Overall things turned out well; if I made this again, I’d make some adjustments to the recipe – double turns to save some time, less stuff, and probably more shapes. The braid is nice but I’m a real sucker for the small, individual pastries.

Roll out some puff pastry about four inches wide and about the length of a half sheet pan. Prick the dough all over so it doesn’t rise all that much. The goal is for a flaky texture not a tall puff. Spread the pastry cream over the entire pastry in a nice thin layer.

Place the choux paste in a pastry bag and pipe out figure eights down the length of the pasty. Try to keep the eights close to each other but don’t have them touching. Pipe a nice think line of jam down the center of the pastry where the eights overlap.

Combine sliced almonds and some large-crystal sugar together and spread over the entire pasty. I left the center jam portion uncover just for presentation purposes. Bake at 375F for about 20 minutes or until the choux paste is a nice dark mahogany and the puff pastry is cooked all the way through. If you don’t cook the choux enough, it will deflate as it cools and it will have an unpleasant undercooked center. After the pastry cools garnish it with some simple icing (powdered sugar and milk) lightly. Slice and serve!

That’s about all there is to it! Slice up the pastries and enjoy.