Lesson Thirteen DANISH, PUFF PASTRIES AND CROISSANTS Correspondence Course APPLIED BAKING TECHNOLOGY TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Dough Lamination Puff Pastry Dough Dough Fat vs. Roll-in Fat Puff Dough Ingredients French Pastry . Handling Puff Dough Scrap .. Programmed Exercises Processing Puff Pastry .... Baking and Finishing Danish Pastry Danish Dough Ingredients Processing Danish.. Baking and Finishing Processing Croissants... Proofing Conditions Baking and Finishing ... Programmed Exercises Summary Glossary Of TEM .ocnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnss Self-Check Quiz (© Copyright, American Insite of Baking, 1997 All ights reserved — Lesson ThirteenLesson Thirteen Danish, Puff Pastries and Croissants Introduction 13.01 Pastries have a flaky texture and generally derive their sweetness from a filling, topping and/or a sugar icing, glaze or coating. The flaky texture is produced by laminating alternating dough and fat layers. ‘There are three major types of pastries: Puff pastries, Danish pastries and Croissants. 13.02. Puff pastry is also known as French pastry to signify the country of its origin. Its only leavening action comes from steam entrapped in the fat between the dough layers. This steam expands and causes a physical separation of the dough layers and thus “putts” the product. 13.03 Danish pastry originated in Austria and was known in Denmark as Wienerbrod (Vienna bread). ‘This pastry was introduced in the United States by Danish bakers and thus became known as Danish pastry. A journeying baker from Copenhagen spread the art of ‘making this pastry at the time of World War I by giving demonstrations in many cities of this country. In contrast to the unleavened French pastry, the Danish pastry is prepared from a yeast-leavened sweet dough that has been laminated with a lesser amount of fat than is normally used for puff pastry. 13.04. Croissants are defined by their shape rather than by the type of dough they are made from. As legend has it, a baker by the name of Peter Windletter was given the privilege to bake a special roll as a reward for alerting the city authorities to an attempt by the Turkish forces to build a tunnel under the city’s wall during the third siege of Vienna in July 1683. ‘The crescent was the ‘emblem of the Moslem forces and by eating this roll, the people celebrated symbolically their victory over their feared enemy. Marie Antoinette introduced this roll to the French court when she married Louis XVI. The roll then became popular in France under the name of “crois- sant.” But it was not until the 1920s that the rich crescent-shaped roll became the flaky croissant as we know it today Dough Lamination 13.05 The objective of the laminating process is to create a large number of separate dough layers. To prevent the merging of these dough layers, fat is rolled in, The more individual layers that can be created, the flakier the final pastry will be. Ina very flaky prod- uct, the gluten structure will be essentially two- dimensional, whereas in bread and in sweet doughs the gluten structure is three-dimensional and the crumb structure is cellular, rather than flaky New technology has been developed in relatively recent times that permits the production of laminated doughs for French (puff) and Danish pastries continu- ously and with fully automated processing equipment. For this type of mass production of pastries, the dough and the roll-in fat are coextruded. After initial flatten- ing and sheeting, the two dough layers, separated by the fat, are laminated to form a multitude of dough and fat layers which are finally reduced to the proper thickness by special multi-roll reduction rollers which tend to stretch the laminated dough gently during the sheeting process. This type of automated dough laminating equipment generally also includes a makeup section for the: filling, forming and dividing of the pastry dough into units ready for proofing or resting and baking or for freezing. Lesson Thirteen — 3