FLAKY HOMEMADE CHEESE DANISH (Beginner Friendly)

hey what's up today i'm going to show you guys how to make a cheese danish that's light and flaky like a croissant but buttery and rich like a brioche yes there's a little bit of lamination involved to get there but overall i've really simplified that process so that even a beginner can get it right to get started i'll grab my stand mixer and in the bowl that i'll measure 165 grams of warm water 165 grams of room temperature milk 50 grams of sugar 8 grams of instant yeast 10 grams of salt and 540 grams of all-purpose flour now the dough hook goes on and i'll mix this on low speed until it's well combined that should take about two to three minutes and once the dough has come together like this i'll grab 40 grams of softened butter and add it in one piece at a time once that butter is in the bowl i'll turn my mixer up to medium speed and continue to mix this for another three to four minutes or until the butter is fully incorporated the dough go through a sticky shaggy face for just about a minute and then eventually the dough will strengthen up and start to clear the bowl like this about six minutes in total of mix time here a quick tug like this tells me whether or not the gluten is developed enough and as you can see there's no tearing or shearing here so we're good now i'll flip my dough into a medium bowl but before i ferment it i'll come back with my hand and round it into a nice taut little ball like this rounding the dough gives us more strength up front but more importantly it gives us a better more uniform starting point to roll out the dough later on now the lid goes on and i'll scoot this dough out of the way to ferment for 90 minutes in the meantime i'll grab two large sheets of parchment paper and a half pound or 225 grams of softened butter the butter i'm using here is called kerrygold it has a higher butter fat percentage than regular commodity butter from the grocery store and that means it's less likely to get absorbed by the dough during lamination also high fat butters are more malleable and less likely to crack when you roll them out cracked butter not good for flaky pastry next i'm gonna grab a ruler and draw an eight inch by 12 inch rectangle vertically on one of my two sheets of parchment to clarify i'm making what's called a butter block or a sheet of butter that we will later layer into the dough for ultimate flakiness once i've got a rectangle i'm gonna put the second piece of paper under the first one and then fold on the lines that i just laid out now we've got two creased rectangles sick now into the middle of the bottom i'm gonna drop my softened 225 gram chunk of butter specifically we need the butter to be malleable like this but not warm and mushy next i'll use the wrapper to push it down to flatten it out a little bit and then the second piece of folded parchment paper is going to get put on top of that i'll close the folds that i just made that can be a little bit annoying though given that there's a mound of fat in there just kind of wrinkling up the paper there we go now the butter is trapped from here i'm going to flip this folded butter package over onto the seam so that the flat side is now facing up from there i'll grab my rolling pin and then start to flatten this butter inside of that rectangle at first i think pounding is the best move to flatten things out otherwise the paper will get overly crinky crinkly once i'm flattened a bit here i'm going to switch to the side of the pin and push and spread the butter into the corners the two papers should trap things tightly around their edges like this that is very satisfying oh my gosh once the butter is pushed out into a relatively flat and straight edged layer like this i'll scoot it onto a sheet tray and then put it into the fridge to firm up while i roll out my dough i like to keep it on a sheet tray by the way because it sets up into a nice flat sheet as opposed to a curvy bendy one checking back on my dough now it's been 90 minutes at room temp and as you can see it's about doubled in size and now it's all gassed up my cutting board is actually a pretty good gauge for length here so i'm going to turn it vertically then flour my bowl my board and then flip out my dough i touch more flour on top to keep the rolling pin from sticking and then using my rolling pin i'm going to roll this dough into a long narrow shape as far as size here i'm looking to roll this dough into a roughly 10 inch wide and 18 to 20 inch tall rectangle with relatively square edges no need for perfection though once i'm there i'll drop a piece of parchment paper about halfway up and then fold the dough over that paper then because layering butter in a dough is very temperature sensitive i'm going to chill this dough down before we add any butter so i'll cover it and then slide it into the fridge to chill down for about 15 minutes at the same time i'm gonna take my butter block out of the fridge to soften up at this point it's fridge temp and fully solid not ideal for rolling and folding if we did that now it would certainly crack and make a greasy pastry in the process while that warms up let me quickly thank the sponsor of this video cometier you guys i'm not an expert when it comes to grinding or brewing my own coffee at home and my daily cup is usually just based on what's easy exhibit a is this nine-year-old drip machine that makes very very okay tasting coffee i really do love and prefer a properly roasted and brewed cup of coffee though i just usually have to go to a coffee shop to get it comment commenter is changing that though they flash freeze super flavorful fresh brewed coffee into these little capsules that they send right to your house so in theory any of us can enjoy the ritual of fancy pour over coffee right at home without skills or equipment i throw the boxes right in my freezer and when i want a cup it's super easy pull one out open the capsule drop it in the cup and then melt it with about eight ounces of hot water but you can definitely make it iced too if that's your thing lauren always goes for iced with almond milk a little nut tastes like nuts it's tasty i want to be caffeine jacked so if you want to give these tasty frozen little coffee capsules a try for yourself for a limited time you can get 30 off your first purchase of commentary plus free shipping when you use my link in the description that's 30 off plus free shipping i'm very caffeinated now and i've never felt more alive thank you comment here 20 minutes later this butter block has softened up just enough to be incorporated into the dough as you can see it's super malleable and bendy now if your butter is not this soft i recommend putting it back in the fridge for about five minutes okay let's laminate this thing i'll grab my dough as you can see it's firm now and quite a bit cooler than before so now my cutting board goes vertical one more time and then i'll unfurl my dough from there i'll straighten things out just a little bit get them nice and tight there we go and now i'll grab my butter block to make sure it will fit within the edges of my dough that looks good so now i'll flip that butter block over so that it's sitting on the bottom two thirds of this dough sheet i'll carefully pull out the parchment from there and now we've got a tidy sheet of beautiful flavorful butter ready to be laminated now the first lamination here is a little bit of a cheat i'm gonna fold the top third over the middle third and then the bottom third over that right away we've got two layers and i didn't have to press the dough or warm it up or work the gluten in any way all those things make lamination a lot harder processed to manage so that was pretty easy next i'll pinch the open sides shut real quick i really want to make sure that no butter squeezes out because that's going to make things greasy and pretty hard to move around i'll turn the dough 90 degrees from here straighten it one more time and then hit it with a light dusting of flour again to keep the rolling pin from sticking now using the rolling pin i'm going to roll this dough out into pretty much the same size sheet that we started with or roughly 10 inches wide by 18 to 20 inches tall one thing i want to mention real quick is that when you're laminating dough you should be gentle with the pressure the harder you press the more likely the butter is to fully hydrate with the flour or like integrate whatever fat does with flour that's not necessarily a bad thing but if that happens to all of the butter then we just have very labor-intensive brioche at that point the separate layers of dough then butter then dough are what make this pastry flaky and that flakiness is what makes this particular danish so special once the dough is rolled out i'm going to turn my board and do what's called a book style fold this is a super efficient way to multiply your butter layers to do it i'll grab the right side and then fold it into the middle then i'll grab the left side and do the same thing from there i'll fold the whole thing in half at the seam just like i would to close a book now we've got eight layers and that's plenty in my opinion for a danish you could re-chill this dough and then fold it two three or even four more times to make like exponentially more butter layers but for danish i find that that amount of complexity just provides diminishing returns now i feel like this dough is still pretty well chilled and the gluten hasn't tightened up too much to make it unworkable so i'm gonna flatten it just a little bit more so the last bit of shaping is even easier once my sheet is about 12 to 14 inches tall and eight inches wide like this i'll scoot it back onto the sheet tray cover it with a towel and then load it back into the fridge for about 20 minutes so the gluten can relax and the dough can cool down 20 minutes later my dough is fully relaxed and as a whole it's cooled down quite a bit to a safe rolling temperature once again now i'm gonna roll this into a sheet in two stages i like to start with a little bit of gentle pounding with my rolling pin because i think it's easier to turn slabs of dough into flatter things faster with just this more localized downward pressure i usually switch between rolling and pounding a few different times until i've got something that's about three quarters of an inch thick 16 inches wide and 10 inches tall give or take at that point the dough should be getting kind of tight and snapping back and the butter will have warmed up again so back onto the sheet tray and back into the fridge to relax for 20 more minutes 20 minutes later it's time to finish shaping again i'll hit this with a light dusting of flour this time on the back side though where the seams are so if any butter does come out it doesn't make things greasy then before i roll anything else out i'm going to cut the dough in half because this is quite a lot of laminated dough and you can either freeze this other half or make two different types of danishes with it which is what i'm gonna do more on this other half in a second with the side that's still on my board i'm gonna roll this out just a little bit more or until it's about a half inch thick like this now to cut this dough uniformly i'm gonna grab some ring molds i'm using the largest one from my set and if you don't have any ring molds i'll link to these in the description or just use a wide mouth glass using the dull side i'm going to line up the spots where i want to make precisely round cuts then using the sharp side i'll press out the rings a lot of you guys might think that this is a little bit fussy and that this is wasteful of the laminated dough i get that but i'm always a fan of making things as pretty as they can be and starting with a perfect round of laminated dough is going to give us an amazing final product an alternative to punching these rounds would be to cut the other sheet into squarish pieces like this and then cut those squares into rough triangles to make it easy i'll show you guys both ways so that you can decide which method is best for you you can either have 10 large round pretty ones or 24 smaller more rustico ones to finish off these round ones i'm going to roll them out just a little bit more let's say from three inches to four ish now i'll flour things lightly then using the tips of my fingers i'll very lightly dab some water around the edges of the pastry from here i'm gonna fold up and press down the edges to create a raised exterior with a sunken interior without that raised edge the cheese would just kind of slide off in the oven and make for a really bad quality danish unfortunately i learned that from experience once i have this little thingy pressed all the way around i'll use my thumbs to stretch it out just a little bit larger this looks small right now but it's getting about four times bigger once it's baked i'll move it onto a sheet tray lined with sprayed parchment paper to proof then i'll shape the rest and before i add any cheese i'm gonna use my fingertips to spread these out just a little bit more this really helps keep that center bottom from being overly thick to shape these little triangle ones it's really just as simple as bringing all three sides into the middle and pressing them until they stick now to cheese these two different danishes i'm gonna squeeze in just a few ounces of whipped cream cheese two ounces or so for the big guys and less for the triangles maybe one to one and a half ounces to make the cream cheese filling here into the bowl of a stand mixer i combined 75 grams of powdered sugar 2 yolks from eggs 5 grams of salt 5 grams of vanilla and 450 grams or 1 pound of softened cream cheese the paddle goes on and i'll spin this up for about a minute to two minutes depending on how tempered your cream cheese was i like to whip it until there's no longer any significant lumps in there like this that little bit of yolk in there really helps set the cheese in the middle of these danishes and it creates an almost souffle effect that i really love one last touch on the large round danish's cheese is to smush it down a little bit with wet fingertips so that it's touching the pastry all the way around this helps it spread more evenly in the oven and helps it integrate more fully with the final product and there we go a beautiful little handmade danny the triangles don't look so bad either now cover this shoe tray with another sheet tray and let them rise here on the counter for 90 minutes 90 minutes later these danishes have risen by about 60 to 75 percent they're all gassed up around the edges and they're looking quite a bit larger to guilt the lily on the large round ones i'm in a large dollop of high acid fruit jam in this case i'm using a mixed berry version that is mostly just raspberries and blackberries but i say go wild use whatever jam you like as long as it's not overly sweet and has a little bit of acidity to it lastly before baking everything is going to get an egg wash that's simply one egg with a splash of milk that little bit of extra milk sugar brings just a touch more depth of caramelization to the outside okay once everything's all moistened up with egg wash i'll load both trays into a 425f 220c oven to bake for 16 to 20 minutes all i have to say on big time here is bid you guys bake it dark after 18 minutes these danishes are ready to pull out at first you'll see the jam and cheese are all puffed up from the egg and that looks kinda weird but that will deflate and it's gonna look awesome 15 minutes later as you can see it does that jam and cheese have kind of melted together into one thing inside the middle of the pastry the outside crust is shiny and dark golden brown and it just looks so flaky especially on these little triangle joints over here oh my they basically look like a croissant with all those layers too but with a little salty sweet cheese hat sitting on top now the last step here is purely optional but i'm gonna hit this with a little bit of icing that's essentially 500 grams of powdered sugar with 30 grams of milk in the zest of half of a lemon feel free to leave that out if you're not really into the sweetness of it personally i kind of think it ties the whole danish room together you guys look at this thing i think it's pretty obvious that this thing slaps pretty freaking hard if you're worried about the lamination step don't be it's not that hard the payoff is so worth it this thing is fruity it's flaky it's buttery it's crispy it's soft and just a little bit sweet and oh yeah it's cheesy i really hope you try it soon let's eat this thing [Music] you

Channel: Brian Lagerstrom

Views: 406,548

Keywords: homemade cheese danish, cheese danish, cheese danish recipe, raspberry danish, easy cheese danish recipe, beginner cheese danish, cheese danish with jam, cream cheese danish, best cheese danish, flaky cheese danish, laminated cheese danish, laminated pastry, danish pastry, make cheese danish, homemade raspberry danish, danish pastry recipe, cream cheese, brian lagerstrom, how to make danishes, weeds and sardines, breakfast pastry, cometeer, cometeer partner

Id: 8nNKRId8HKs

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 17 2022