Winging it

A few weeks ago the Daring Bakers had us making a Danish Braid. Well, it’s stuck with us (on our waistlines as well as in our sweet-teeth, I’m sure). Rather than follow the exacting recipe over at KellyPea’s blog, I just … well, kinda winged it.

To begin with, this is a sourdough thing, because when you have a sourdough starter, you use it. So, Sadie came out of the fridge in the morning, to spend some time getting warmed up and having some cheap food (we’ve ended up switching her to white flour, due to having run out of whole wheat a few batches ago). When she was good and warm and bubbly, I mixed her up with some plain flour & separated a bit out to go back into the fridge. I then added some 8-grain flour from the Flour Bin and gave everything a good kneading.

With everything well on its way to being bread (sans salt and yeast), I let the dough rest for a bit. Meanwhile, I’d been boiling some whole oats in non-chlorinated water. I drained off 1 cup of the water, strained out the oats (about 2 cups, cooked), and let these cool for a bit. When the oat water was cooled down to only quite warm I added it to the dough, along with 1 Tbsp yeast and 1.5 tsp salt. I then brought the whole volume of dough back to a dough consistency by kneading and adding more of the 8-grain flour.

At this point, the dough was just pretty much basic dough. So, I separated out about 1/3 of the dough, to become the Danish. To the rest I added my whole oats, along with an extra 1/2 tsp of salt (it should have been probably a whole tsp, tasting it later). The oat-loaves got kneaded until they felt right, thrown into two loaf pans to rise, and eventually made it into the oven.

To the 1/3 which had been saved from the oats, I added 1 tsp Garam Masala, the guts of a vanilla bean, and about 1/2 Cup granulated sugar. I then rolled it out flat, put some Benecol spread upon 2/3 of it, folded it over, and repeated the spread and the folding once more. (Note that there was no waiting in there, nor any refrigeration of the dough. Note, also, that it was just straight spread, no worrying with mixing it with flour or anything.) I then rolled it out to about the right size, placed it on a baking sheet, filled it with far more par-cooked apples than I would have thought it could handle, and did the whole braiding thing with it.

The four leftover corners each got a square of dark chocolate and became miniature Danish. The lot of them got to sit out on the stovetop while the loaves were baking.

So, what’s the verdict, on doing this without following any of the rules?

• I think that the chilling of the dough might have made this flakier … but we’re not worried with it, because we’re not really into all that flakiness.
• The amount of “butter” was reduced enough as well, so that we can eat this and not feel as if we’re eating a really high-calorie dish.
• I think that the biggest improvement to the whole thing would have been to have added a bit more cinnamon and ginger to the apples (ingredients: apples, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg), and perhaps a bit of sugar.
• If I’d added some of the vanilla bean to the apples, as well as to the dough, it might have been an improvement, simply in terms of marrying the flavors together, but that’s just a bit of fine-tuning.
• The rising of the dough might have been better if I’d let things rise before adding the filling, as I feel that the bottom didn’t rise enough, so was a bit too dense.
• The payoff to this method is largely that the refrigerator simply has no role in this method, nor does waiting for hours for the dough to chill.

Perhaps next time we’ll try things a bit differently. We’ll see – but at least this version we feel that we can eat!

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