Bake 52 Week 49 Large Danish Braid

I think this was the most complex recipe I've made with this group.  Before I joined they made some pretty intense pastries (which I still want to try) but this is the most complex pastry I've made.  The dough is pretty typical, warm milk, egg, flour, sugar, yeast and salt, mixed/kneaded in a stand mixer.

I had to add the full amount of the flour to get it to come into a ball.

Even then it was really sticky.  I transferred it to another bowl and put it in the frig for 1 hour.  The next step was to make a butter square.  I used a rolling pin to mash three half cubes of butter and one tablespoon of flour.  I was trying to be quite since I was doing this at 5:30 in the morning and my husband was still asleep. 

It took some working and pushing it around under the parchment paper but I think I ended up with a pretty good square.

That went into the frig as well.  An hour later it was time to roll out the dough.  I had a hard time getting it into a square.  I ended up working with it too long, the dough got warm and too sticky.  So I gathered it all up, stuck it back in the frig, waited 20 minutes and tried again. 

On my second try I was happy enough with the square.

Not perfect but... I went ahead with the next step anyway.  I folded up the dough corners to cover the butter.  Then I started mashing it as well until I could start rolling it out into a square again. 

You can see how the dough got really thin in some places so you can see the butter.  I folded it in thirds, and then in thirds again to a get a little square.  That's the same way I fold my husband's handkerchiefs.  :-)  Back into the frig it went for two hours.

After two hours I rolled the little square out into a big square again and then folded it up in thirds (twice) again.  Then after wrapping it up in plastic wrap (again) it went in the frig.

The rest of the recipe I did after church.  The cookbook had four options for the filling:  Apricot, prune, cheese, and cheese & cherry.  Yeah... I don't think so.  I made chocolate ganache for my filling. 

I melted 9 oz of semi sweet chocolate with a cup of heavy cream over a double boiler.  I only used about half of it.  I let it cool while I rolled out my dough.  Then I spread some yummy chocolate down the middle.

I didn't get it very centered, did I?  The next step was to cut the strips.  I used Jonathan's ruler and a pizza cutter. 

Then I folded the strips over, the middle, alternating each side. 

Not exactly symetrical... or as pretty as the one in the book but it was my first try.  It supposed let it sit for 30 minute to rise.  I let it sit for almost 45 minutes and it didn't look any different so I just stuck it in the oven.

After 13 minutes I rotated the pan.  It was looking pretty brown already so I set the timer for 11 minutes the second time.  I should have set it for like 5! 

Look at how dark it is!!  I already had the glaze made so I spread it over the whole thing while it was hot. 

In the book the glaze looks almost clear but look at how white mine is...  I'm supposed to let it sit for an hour and then drizzle icing over it...  But it was almost bedtime so I skipped that step.

The next day I did have a piece.

It was really good!  You can see how flaky the pastry was with all those layers of butter.  But I was disappointed that I had over cooked it.  The piece I had was from the end that wasn't burnt.  I threw the burnt part away.  This method is something I will be trying again.  The whole dessert was pretty fancy so maybe I'll make it for something where I have some time and I want to impress someone! 

For the recipe go to Jen's blog.