Hahaha.. thought I’d miss this one.
Here it is; the Daring Baker’s challenge for June: Danish bread, hosted by Kelly of Sass & Veracity, and Ben of What’s Cookin’?.
In this post I explained the funny circumstance that let me actually bake this challenge despite not having a kitchen because I’m traveling in South America. My thanks to Barbara who let us use her kitchen. Actually, they’re in the middle of building a new restaurant, and if you’re ever in Mindo, Ecuador, it will be worth checking out. Not only is the plan for their new kitchen droolworthy, but they have a HUGE garden with every kind of vegetable and fruit that you can imagine, and some that you can’t, and they use it to cook their food so that it’s as fresh as possible. It’s called El Quetzal.
Anyway, there are some restrictions because of the food available to us, but also some opportunities that we wouldn’t otherwise have had. Barbara didn’t have any cardamom, nor did she know where to get some, so we improvised with equal parts nutmeg and cinnamon. Same with vanilla beans and extract, but she did have some vanilla sugar, so we used some of that instead. The flour that she had was pastry flour and not all-purpose, and then because Mindo is a cloudforest, the kitchen was really really humid, which may or may not have had an impact. Same goes for the elevation, and the actual baking of the bread was difficult as her oven doesn’t even go as high as 400F. Also a lot of the ingredients were different here.. the butter definitely had a unique taste (but I liked it, and I would guess that it was fresher than you would get normally), and the milk was unhomogenized, etc.
But as for the opportunities that we wouldn’t otherwise have had, well, she had a garden full of fruits, some of which you just don’t see in North America. We decided that it would be best to give our bread an Ecuadorian twist. We made two braids, each with a different filling, and both fillings that we made were from fresh local fruit.
Part of the fun was also trying to explain to everyone who passed by and was curious (which was pretty much everyone who passed by) what we were doing, and what a Danish bread is called in Spanish, especially since we didn’t know the word for Denmark in Spanish. If any of you know what a Danish Bread is called in Spanish, let me know!
And now on to talk about the actual challenge. If you want to see the original recipe as it was given, it’s after the jump.
For the bread itself, things went pretty smoothly. Our dough was a little sticky, so we had to add some flour. I think it ended up being at least a half cup or so of extra flour until the bread was a good consistency. For modifications that we had to make, we subsitituted lime rind for the orange rind that the recipe called for because the oranges in Ecuador taste different and their rinds are really really bitter. The orange juice that we added was freshly squeezed. With all these fresh ingredients, it’s not surprising that this dough smelled delicious!
The butter block was fairly straight forward to make, and the first turn went alright. We had some difficulties with the second turn; for some reason we had trouble understanding which way to roll the dough out, but we figured it out in the end. The third and fourth turns went smoothly. The most difficult part was to wait for it to chill for FIVE HOURS in the fridge. Can you imagine? In the end we ran out of patience (and time) and took it out after four and a half.
In the meantime we made the fillings. But first, a picture dictionary of Ecuadorian fruits.
Fruit #1: Lime
This is a lime. It looks an orange on the outside (though slighly more red), and it really really looks like an orange on the inside, but it tastes like a really really good lime. They call it a limon mandarino. This came from a tree in her garden, and was freshly picked by my sister.
Fruit # 2: Guayaba
This is a guayaba. It’s round and yellow, and the inside is bright pink. They taste tart, and as I can’t describe tastes very well, you’ll just have to go to Ecuador sometime and try it yourself. You can’t pick these from the tree, but have to wait until they fall. Then you collect them, peel them and fish out the worms. They ALL have worms. Though most Ecuadorians just use them whole, worms and all, Barbara picks out all the worms first, and so did we. Below is a picture of a small guayaba worm in my sister’s hand.
I guess that’s all because the apples and the mangoes looked pretty normal.😉
The filling for the first braid was apple and guayaba. We followed the recipe as it was given (the recipe as it was given is after the break), but added the chopped guayaba when the apples were half done sauteeing. Also, we substituted fresh lime juice for lemon juice, because we had limes but no lemons. Here’s a picture of the apples and guayaba sauteeing. It looks a lot like it’s apples and ham, but it really isn’t. I think that this was the better filling of the two.
The second one was mango, and we sauteed them too, because they were not completely ripe yet. Unfortunately, this ended up being a little more sour than ideal, but it was still good. I think I would have liked this one as much as the other if it had been a little less sour. We added some vanilla sugar and some sugar to the mangoes, but no cinnamon. We also added some lime juice, which in retrospect we maybe shouldn’t have done. Or added less. Or something. Also, the filling ended up a little runnier than maybe it should have been. Oh well.
Here is a picture of the sauteed mangoes.
Finally, we braided the braids.
After braiding it, we did the egg wash, then topped the apple-guayaba one with chopped walnuts and the mango one with sugar and (should have) set them to rise for two hours; We cut the time short a half an hour again because it was getting late. Because the kitchen was cooler than room temperature, we should have left it longer than the two hours, but we just didn’t.
Mango braid: Brushing on the egg wash. This was later topped with sugar.
Apple and guayaba braid topped with chopped walnuts
And here are the final braids.
Apple/guayaba braid
Mango braid
Mango braid
Because the oven didn’t go as high as 400F, we just set it to the max and hoped for the best. Turns out it might have been hotter than called for, because the top browned nicely, but the inside in the very very middle (other than the very very middle it was perfect) was a little undercooked. The second one (the mango one) came out with better dough. It was flakier and more even. It might have been because it spent more time chilling (stayed in the fridge while we braided the first), or it might have been because it had longer to rise (being on top of the oven while the other was cooking), or it could have been for a totally different reason altogether, but anyway both breads were a success. Despite having two big braids, most of it was gone within fifteen minutes of cooking, and we only took a small piece to share for breakfast the next day so that Barbara would have some too.
Apple/guayaba braid
Mango braid
And that’s it! An unlikely daring baker’s challenge, a Ecuadorian danish bread, a whatever-you-want-to-call-it, it was really fun. Thanks again, Barbara!
Next month from Peru?
Original recipe as given is after the break. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the daring bakers’ posts at the other blogs. The list is here. Also feel free to check out the daring baker forum here.
