Daring Bakers - Danish Braid

I always think I have little baking experience, but I think that mainly comes from the fact that most yeast things that I try to bake don’t really turn out. But the truth is, I used to assist cooking classes and one summer I assisted a ton of baking classes. You don’t realize how much information you’ve absorbed until you have to turn around and use it! Luckily I had seen laminated dough made in one of those classes, so it wasn’t intimidating to me. Again, my main challenge would be time, although thank goodness for maternity leave!

The recipe was for yeasted laminated dough. We were required to make one danish braid and then could do whatever we wanted with the rest of the dough. I chose to make two danish braids, mainly because I didn’t want to freeze the dough. I ate one and gave the other to my friend who helped me put the braid together. Her family loved it!

I don’t always have time to read all of the questions regarding the challenge, but I did notice that a few people had issues with the dough. I had zero. I chilled my flour, it wasn’t very humid, and everything rolled out perfectly. I was able to make the dough and do my turns in between naps and bottles.

For my filling, I decided to do pastry cream and mixed berries. I love pastry cream. Love it! Plus, I’ve made it before and knew I could make it quickly (major consideration). For the mixed berries, I used fresh blueberries, blackberries and raspberries. I followed the apple filling recipe for the most part. The berries were a little soupier than I would have liked, but they turned out very nicely.

Our one mistake was not filling and braiding the first one *on* the sheet pan we were baking it on. We eventually got it onto the parchment paper, but it took a lot of maneuvering since the braid was fairly heavy at that point. Second time around we made the braid on the parchment paper.

For the full recipe, visit Kelly at Sass & Veracity.

The rolled out dough, cut into strips.

With the filling down the middle. After tasting the finished product, we definitely could have put more pastry cream in.

Extra braids? Just cut them off and use them to seal the ends! Genius.

Egg wash, sugar, and sprinkled almonds.

Voila! Delicious!

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