danish braid; tuesdays with dorie

 
this weeks challenge called for making a batch of danish dough, something my current schedule did not have time to accommodate.  hard to believe but that actually worked in my favor.  way back when, in january, i was testing recipes for a project i am working on.  one of the recipes was for a danish dough.  after testing the recipe, i put half a batch in my freezer to see how it would work out after being frozen. needless to say, the dough will tolerate freezing but not being frozen for 9 months!  my guess is that 3 months is the maximum time it could be frozen and thawed and still rise properly.  while it was past its prime, it was still pretty good, just a little denser than i would prefer.

to bake a braid like the tuesdays of dorie bakers, buy a copy of baking with julia or visit the contributing baker's, beatrice ojakangas, contribution to the woman today website.  to see how the tuesdays with dorie bakers did with this challenge, visit the website.

 since i was already breaking the rules by not making the dough-let's just call this my effort to clean the freezer, i decided to wing it completely.  for the filling, i used a sweet red apple, a gala apple to be precise.  after peeling and slicing it, i mixed it with a little dark brown sugar, some spice and a little flour.  to complete it, i sweetened a little cream cheese and added an egg yolk to it and used that as a base for the apple filling.

 forming a braid is really simple.  the most time you will spend is marking out the dough and making the cuts.  it is really important to have a flap at the bottom and the top.  these are folded in over the filling to help keep it from oozing out during the rising and the baking.  then, going from left to right, fold a strip in to the opposite side to give the illusion of braiding the dough.

 the cream cheese base and the spiced apples fill the center of the dough.

 the completed braid is ready for rising

 just out of the oven

so, if you need any assistance, call me.  i will be in the kitchen breaking rules and not following directions and misbehaving in general.  this all has consequences-usually of the dessert kind...