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Danish Pastry
1 pint bread flour 3 tablespoons warm milk 2 tablespoons Argo or Kings- 1/2 cup sour cream ford's Cornstarch 1/2 cup Mazola 2 tablespoons sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 compressed yeast cake 4 tablespoons chopped nut meats 4 tablespoons chopped raisins 1½ teaspoons cinnamon and 3 tablespoons sugar, mixed Sift together flour, cornstarch, salt and sugar, and stir in Mazola. Add cream and yeast dissolved in warm milk. Cover, chill over night, and roll thin into oblong shape. Brush with Mazola, cover with nuts, raisins, sugar and cinnamon mixed, fold and press edges together and bake about thirty minutes in a moderate oven, 350 to 375 degrees F. Cut in squares.
This is a corn-oil shortcut on Danish pastry: no butter block, no folding and turning, just an enriched dough rested cold overnight and rolled once around a nut-and-raisin filling. A few of the measures need translating before you start.
- A pint of flourFlour was measured by volume here, so a pint means 2 cups, roughly 8 to 9 oz of bread flour. Sift it as directed rather than scooping, or the dough will come out dry.
- The yeast cakeOne compressed yeast cake of the period was about 0.6 oz, equivalent to a 2 1/4-teaspoon packet of active dry or instant yeast. Dissolve it in the 3 tablespoons of warm milk at about 105F.
- Mazola and ArgoMazola is corn oil and works unchanged; Argo or Kingsford's cornstarch is plain cornstarch. Their presence is the point of the book, which was published to promote corn products, and the cornstarch softens the crumb.
- Sour creamSour cream of the period was often naturally soured rather than commercially cultured, and would likely have been thinner and sharper than today's tubs. Full-fat commercial sour cream is fine; if it is very stiff, thin it with a spoonful of milk so the dough comes together without extra flour.
- The overnight chill is the methodThere is no separate rise. The dough ferments slowly in the refrigerator overnight, which both raises it and firms the oil-rich dough enough to roll thin. Skipping or shortening it gives a flat, greasy sheet.
- Moderate ovenThe recipe helpfully names its own temperature: 350 to 375F. Bake on a parchment-lined sheet and check at 25 minutes -- a filled sheet this thin can color before the half hour is up.
- Sealing and cuttingPress the edges firmly, as the sugar filling will run and weld the pastry to the pan if it escapes. Cut into squares while still warm but not hot; the sugar sets glassy once cold.
- YieldOne 2-cup batch makes a single filled oblong, about 12 to 16 small squares -- a modest coffee-cake rather than individual pastries.
Danish pastry is known in Denmark as wienerbrød, Vienna bread, and the trade's own account traces it to Viennese bakers brought in during a Copenhagen bakers' strike in the mid-nineteenth century -- a story repeated everywhere but documented thinly. What reached America by the 1920s was the name attached to almost any sweet yeast-raised, filled dough, which is how a recipe with no butter block and no turns can be printed as Danish Pastry without apology. The book it appears in is a manufacturer's pamphlet of the kind American food companies produced in quantity between the wars, with the brand names set into the ingredient list itself. Here oil simply stands in for the laminating butter, and the recipe makes no claim about the exchange at all.