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- Like who would have thought that once again,
in your hour of need, that,
that you would turn to us, you know?
- I admit.
- Hm, help yourself.
- Hey what's up with the fancy pastry.
We got to keep the food budget down.
- Well, what are we supposed to have for breakfast?
- The oatmeal packets.
- Oatmeal packets.
- [Narrator] Hey, what's up guys.
Welcome back to Binging with Babish.
For this week, we're taking a look
at the fancy pastry from Ant-Man and the Wasp,
which of course is just
an Entenmann's Raspberry Danish Twist.
Now I am of course, living on earth with a heart
and the intelligence of a human being.
So I love Entenmann's.
After all, it's basically just sugar that you can chew,
but as I'm sure any Dane will tell you,
it's a pretty far cry from Danish pastry.
It is very soft.
It is extraordinarily sweet
and it's got streusel on it for some reason.
And again, it's delicious.
So I don't really feel a need to improve upon it.
And I will freely admit that this episode
was just an excuse to surprise my girlfriend, Jess
with her favorite pastry, raspberry Danish.
But I think I'm allowed to do that every once in a while.
So let's dig in.
The first thing we're gonna need is very high quality
and very French butter.
You ideally wanna use French butter
because it actually has a higher melting point
than other butters.
We're following a recipe from King Arthur flour.
So into the bowl of the stand mixer
goes 659 grams of all purpose flour,
which of our 450 grams of unsalted butter,
we're gonna grab about 30 grams or two tablespoons worth
and work it into the flour with our fingers
like we're making a pie dough.
This apparently coats the flour
with a bit of fat making the pastry more tender
but I don't know if that's true.
We're also adding 67 grams of sugar
and 12 grams of instant yeast.
Tiny whisking until homogenous
and then it's time to add the wet stuff.
75 milliliters or about a third of a cup of lukewarm water
and 230 milliliters of refrigerator cold, full fat milk.
We're also adding about three grams
or one teaspoon of vanilla extract and two large eggs
because Danish pastry is very similar to croissant,
but instead of a lean dough,
it's a very soft and enriched dough,
which makes it a lot more forgiving.
Anyway, we're mixing that together with 15 grams
of kosher salt and mixing until just combined
and no dry spots remained about two minutes.
What will result is a very sticky dough
that we're gonna cover and let rest,
whilst we prepare our butter squares.
You heard me right.
Butter squares, not square.
On two sheets of parchment paper,
we are placing the remaining halves
of our 450 grams of butter
and using a rolling pin and our repressed rage,
pounding out to a thickness of about one or two centimeters.
Then we're opening up the parchment paper
folding the butter in half, flouring as necessary
and pounding out again.
A sum total of four times or until the butter
has the consistency and rigidity of Play-Doh,
that is you can almost bend it entirely in half
without it breaking.
Rinse and repeat with the other half of the butter
and there you have, it our two butter rectangles,
which we're gonna set aside,
while we generously flour our countertop,
turnout our enriched yeasted dough.
Use a bench scraper to coax it into a rectangle,
roughly the same size as our butter rectangle
and roll it out to about three times its width
and a few centimeters taller
so it can perfectly envelop the butter.
The first slap of which, we're gonna place
in the center of the dough and then fold one side over it,
making sure to drape and not stretch.
Then we're gonna lay the second butter rectangle
at top of that and give everybody a thorough dusting
to make sure that there's no excess flour
because as we fold the remaining third of the dough
the butter, we want everything to stick together,
which we will emphasize by pinching the edges shut.
And there you have it pastry with two layers of butter,
but now we are going to perform the task of laminating,
that is rolling the dough out
to about the same width and height that it was before.
Once again, brushing off any excess flour
and folding, once again into thirds,
like a pamphlet, a pastry pamphlet
for pastry pundits.
Had to pull out the thesaurus for that one.
And just like that, we've got six layers of butter,
but we're not done.
We're gonna wrap plastic wrap and fridge for 20 minutes
before unwrapping and rolling out once again,
folding into thirds and rolling out one more time.
So hang on six times three times three.
Let me just do the math real quick.
My calculator tells me that that's 54 layers of butter,
which we're gonna wrap in plastic
and left rest in the fridge for anywhere
from four to 16 hours,
before cutting into our desired portions
and rolling out for final assembly,
which in our first attempt to sort of recreate
the Entenmann's vibe, we're gonna cut into a rectangle.
I wanna imitate the Entenmann's dimensions as best as I can.
That's a tongue twister.
So I'm going to measure out a rectangle
about 13 by six inches because I anticipate it shrinking
about an inch in each direction when baked.
Then I'm cutting out three one inch wide strips,
brushing off any excess flour, brushing my strips down
with a beaten egg and laying one strip
in the middle of the rectangle with two strips
flanking it on each side.
This I hope is gonna give us
the two sort of raspberry canals that you get
with the Entenmann's Danish twist.
Then we're gonna place this on a rim baking sheet
and cover with greased plastic wrap, proofed for one hour.
To make our cheese filling, we're combining a 100 grams
each cream cheese and ricotta, along with one whole egg.
I'm just kidding.
Remove the egg from its shell.
35 grams of sugar and a generous pinch of kosher salt.
Sorry, tiny whisk.
This is not a job for you.
Now you could easily whisk this together in a stand mixer,
but I was feeling that special kind of lazy
where doing the hard thing somehow feels easier
than getting the thing out to do the easy thing.
Then we are retrieving our proven pastry
and piping into the channels
both our cheese mixture and some raspberry jam.
And in this case, it's better to opt
for store-bought raspberry jam.
I tried making my own and it's too runny.
Brush the whole thing down with a beaten egg
and bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 to 18 minutes
and do not bake it on the top rack.
or you're gonna get this weird dappling
instead of the nice even browning that you're after,
but it's still totally edible
so we're gonna make a glaze out of a big pile
of confectioner's sugar mixed with
just a little bit of skim milk.
So it doesn't end up too runny,
like you know, this one is.
Then I'm attempting to imitate Entenmann's
weird glaze pattern.
It's kind of like a rainbow shape
and I'm slicing and serving.
And I gotta say, this is just not doing it for me.
It's totally delicious.
But I think the shape was developed
for factory optimization and there's no artistry in it.
And danishes are an opportunity
for prettily patterned pastry.
So let's roll out another half batch
of dough to a thickness of about one centimeter
and take a crack at the ever popular Danish braid.
This involves trimming your dough into a rectangle
and then placing diagonal cuts down the sides
of the pastry about two centimeters wide
and leaving a gap in the center of the pastry
about the same width as the length of the strips.
Did that make any sense?
No? Well, just make it look like a Christmas tree.
Then we are piping our cheese mixture
and raspberry jam down that center strip,
folding the top of the tree down over the filling
and then interleaving the branches that is folding them over
on a diagonal over the filling alternating left to right,
creating the picturesque pattern known as the Danish braid.
Tuck the bottom flap under the last two strips.
Cover with greased plastic wrap proof for one hour.
Now, like I said, you don't generally
wanna use homemade jam.
I did, and I experienced some leakage, but no biggie.
Brush down with a beaten egg
and bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 to 18 minutes.
This time on the middle rack.
So you get that perfectly golden brown pastry
that will haunt your dreams when you're at a gas station
and you want breakfast.
Once completely cooled on a wire rack,
drizzle with your glaze, slice and serve.
And I gotta say, as far as elongated, sliceable pastries
for a crowd go, this is the one you want,
but if you really wanna explore
just how pretty Danish pastry can be,
you need to only roll it out and slice it into even squares.
And upon these squares, you shall build your church
for my favorite patterns, simply fold in half diagonally
and place two cuts down the sides of the pastry
leaving a gap at the end.
Brush off any excess flour.
Separate the two flaps you've now created on each side
and fold them over each other.
To make the Danish known as, I don't know what it's called,
let's call it the pointy twisty,
which when you actually make it,
you're gonna first wanna brush down with a beaten egg,
both for color and so everybody sticks to everybody.
Next up, what I can only imagine is called the pinwheel.
Place four cuts from each corner,
leaving a gap in the center,
brush down with beaten egg and fold half of each triangle
towards the center in an alternating fashion
so that it forms a pinwheel.
Next up, a rather complicated one that has a big payoff.
We're gonna place 90 degree cuts
in each corner of the pastry, leaving a gap between them.
Brush down with beaten egg yolk and fold
the now loosened corners towards the center of the pastry,
creating what I'm gonna call the corner cut crazy carnation.
Then the easiest of all the shapes,
basically just brush the thing down with egg yolk
and fold each facet of the square towards the center
to create what I call the lazy crumple-doo.
Next, we can actually make a miniature version
of our Danish braid.
Basically just do everything I said before
but in a smaller way.
Pipe the first stuff, pipe the other stuff,
brushy brush with beaten egg, foldy fold
until everything's ensconced in an elegant eclair.
And then last but not least, the one that I wished
that I didn't do on camera because it kind of exploded,
just brush down one side of the square
and folded on top of itself,
like an open-ended Danish burrito.
Then we are filling our as yet unfilled pastries
with dollops of cheese at raspberry jam
and as usual baking at 400 degrees Fahrenheit
for 15 to 18 minutes until golden brown,
puffed and picture perfect.
Except for, you know, this guy,
who I warned you about, I told you he's a troublemaker,
but everybody else is looking pretty damn nice.
To ensure crispness, we are cooling completely
on a wire rack and then drizzling
with our slightly thicker drizzle.
Otherwise it just kind of disappears into the pastry
and then finally we're digging in
and I think this is the way to do Danish.
Not only is it pretty, but it's smaller.
So it's able to puff up more
and the pastry is able to bake more evenly.
It's somewhere between croissant and brioche.
It is jammy and cheesy and just the right amount of sweet.
And it's a member of the clean Jess club.
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