Week 6 of the baking challenge is already here as we just passed the middle of February. This week’s challenge is laminated dough, which is layers upon layers of dough and butter to make light and crispy dough pastries. The trick to this pastry dough is keeping the butter cold while being made, as this is what is used to create light layers. The pastries are baked at a high temperature to evaporate the water in the butter to help puff up the layers. Also, the folding and turning of the dough cause hundreds of layers of dough, so it’s important to follow the directions.

As this was my first time giving laminated dough a shot, I found the recipe and blog on the King Arthur’s website very helpful along with their step by step instructions and images to go with each step.

Recipe can be found here with steps, but you can use this blog post as you go through the steps.

The process wasn’t overly complicated, however, it was a very time consuming process. I started the dough Sunday morning and didn’t have fresh danish until Monday morning, as it is recommended to let the dough rest overnight. You also are required to let the dough rest in-between turns, which is really important to keep the butter cold.

Overall, I would definitely use this recipe again. One thing I did add was a tablespoon of cinnamon to the dough, to give it a little kick of spice. I also made my own homemade strawberry filling, which I used to fill in the center hole, along with the cheese filling from the linked recipe. One bit of feedback I received from the cheese filling was there was not enough tang from the cream cheese, so possibly adding a bit less of ricotta cheese might help, or even by adding some lemon zest to give it a zing.