Daring Bakers Challenge: Danish Bread

My second Daring Bakers challenge is complete! Unlike last month, this challenge was much less about veganizing the assigned recipe and more about technique. The scariest part for me was making the laminated dough, consisting of alternating layers of detempre (dough) and beurrage (butter, i.e. Earth Balance). Even with well chilled ingredients, my butter was squirting out the edges every turn of the dough I made. But in the end, I had two beautiful fruit-filled danishes to show for it.


The process of actual braiding the danish was much easier than I anticipated. The hardest part was rolling out a rectangle! And of course, on my first braid I failed to place the dough on my silpat prior to braiding.... big mistake and is was a painstaking process to transfer it, I was lucky it didn't get ruined! (check out this and this video for a visual demonstration)

As the danish baked, orange and cardamom (in the dough) wafted through the air, filling the house with an amazing aroma. I wish I could bottle up that smell, I think it might get me out of bed faster in the morning. Here is the danish right out of the oven.

For the danish braid filling, I wanted to use mainly local ingredients, especially with the bounty of fruits available in the summer season! The danish below is filled with blueberries and blackberries, and a pastry cream (not local) with drizzled icing for some extra sweetness.

The second braid is filled with Texas peaches and finished with almond icing as well as sliced almonds. I didn't quite get the flakiness I wanted (probably due to all that squirting Earth Balance), but these still tasted so much better than those store-bought danishes I remember from my pregan days.
With the leftover dough, I experimented with a few smaller danish shapes for fun. Now I'm wishing I had more of this dough in my freezer to make a few danishes whenever I fancied them.

What will next month bring for this vegan daring baker? I guess you'll just have to wait and see!