Quick Danish
The restaurant is situated inside a luxury condominium building, and is therefore contracted to provide breakfast to the residents. Some pastry chefs may see this obligation as a burden and will try to outsource their baked goods. I see it as an opportunity to get creative and to teach my cooks & externs a new skill they wouldn't necessarily learn in a restaurant environment; but my team is small and I don't often have a lot of time to dedicate to breakfast.
Enter: the quick danish. The dough is easily made in the Robot Coupe (similar to a rich pie dough, but yeasted), and we make small enough batches to roll by hand. Each time we make it, we try to play with different shapes and fillings. For this round, we whipped up some spicy sweet date butter using an excess of dates from an old winter dish. It was then spread on a sheet of dough and sprinkled with dried apricots. We rolled it, sliced it, proofed it, and baked it, and finished the tray with a little apricot glaze and a drizzle of icing. A quick danish doesn't go through the rigorous lamination process of the classic version so won't expand as much, but the finished product is still flaky, with a crisp bite and moist, tender interior.
Other variations have included a windowed strip with raspberry-ricotta filling, chocolate pinwheels and pear & almond swirly-cup-things.
