Danish Pastry -- Advance Preparation
Planning on making Danish Pastry for Thanksgiving Brunch at work. The timing will be a bit tricky, since it's in the middle of the week. So -- is it better to freeze the pastry dough and do the thaw/shape/bake thing the night before, or to actually bake the pastries and freeze them (minus any glaze), and then crisp them up in the oven?
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3 Comments
Make & shape pastries raw, freeze first. Then thaw/temper and bake, and glaze the day your will eat them. Although you can skip the glaze - glazing danishes, in general, is meant to keep them shelf-stable and glowing, to tempt customers. I never really understood shellacking a crispy pastry - it seems counter intuitive to pleasure, but that just might be me overthinking it all. Also a lot of glaze out there is pretty gloopy/gloppy, so I stay away from it unless I'm making it myself.
You can always freeze what you have baked, and re-crisp in the oven before eating, but that sort of defeats the home-made pastry-ness. Danish dough is a lot of hard work. If it were me as your eater, I would rather the former than the latter. Good for you for making danishes from scratch! I commend you.