Because a batch of folded pastries popped open during baking, this recipe tells you, in effect, that classical Danish pastries just don't work; and after you've gone to all the trouble of making a laminated dough, you are told to wad it up in little balls and squash them into mini-pizzas. That is just plain silly. This recipe repeats the flaws of the KAF croissant recipe: it tries for too many "turns" and too thin a lamination. Puff pastry can achieve 6 triple turns, for (theoretically) 729 butter layers; but laminated yeast doughs like Danish pastry or croissants are harder to roll out (more rubbery from the gluten, more moist), and their dough layers are made more fragile by the yeast action. One professional text says that "croissant dough is given a total of two and one-half to three [triple] turns, very rarely four turns, never more" (Bilheux and Escoffier, "Doughs, Batters, and Meringues," page 181); that means 27 butter layers (3 to the third power) or "very rarely" 81 butter layers. By contrast, this KAF recipe calls for 2 butter layers to start with, plus 3 quadruple turns, for a total of 128 butter layers -- nearly 5 times the usual maximum! The almost inevitable result is that the dough and butter layers simply amalgamate, producing a baked pastry that may taste fairly good, but that lacks the flaky exterior and honeycombed interior of a well-made laminated yeast dough. Moreover, the refrigeration times between turns ("20 minutes," "another short rest") are way too short, at least outside a Vermont climate, and make a lamination breakdown still more likely; and the Cabot butter referred to in the blog, extra-easy to slice even when cold, is also extra-difficult to work with in this dough. The photos in the blog bear this out: the rolled-out dough with its 128 imaginary layers of butter looks more like rolled pizza dough (BlogPhotos54, top) and the limp pieces of cut-to-size dough are retracting badly (same, bottom). Instead, this dough should look exactly like rolled puff pastry: smooth and even on the surface, with cut edges that stay sharp. This recipe shares another flaw with the KAF croissants: the unbuttered dough is not given a chance to develop flavor through a pre-lamination rise. (Compare KAF's baguette recipe, with its overnight starter plus a 3-hour pre-forming rise.) No wonder this Danish recipe thinks a spoonful of "buttery sweet dough flavor" is necessary! As for the change in shape during baking, to some extent that is normal: my Danish envelopes (4 corners folded to the center as in BlogPhotos48) expand from 3 inches before rising to more than 4 inches after baking, and the corners pull away from the center somewhat). But the main culprit here is probably too much yeast, and instant yeast at that. KAF's croissant recipe, with the same amount of flour, calls for 2 1/4 teaspoons of yeast; this Danish recipe nearly doubles the yeast to 4 teaspoons. And because instant yeast is engineered to be extra-vigorous on the first rise, this one-rise recipe results in more yeast action, teaspoon for teaspoon, than a classical Danish recipe. Also, most echt-Danish cut-and-fold shapes involve pastry stuck onto pastry, like my 4-corner envelopes, the 2-corner variant suggested in another blog comment, or the cockscombs pictured here; expecting a dough with a double rising action (yeast and lamination) to stick to a soft, damp filling is mostly wishful thinking. It also helps to lightly moisten the dough and press the flap down very firmly, slightly indenting it. Finally, the fold is more likely to open if the dough is too thick for the length of the flap; for a 4-inch square of dough with its corners folded in, the thickness should only be about 3/16 inch. The yeast is not the only excessive ingredient in this dough formula; while the salt and sugar proportions are sound, the minimum amount of cardamom (1/2 teaspoon) is almost double what I use, and 1 teaspoon is ridiculous unless your cardamom is stale by several years. All in all, this recipe recognizes some of its own problems, ignores others, and solves none of them. It should never have been published. Thank you for copying your same review of this recipe onto the Blog as well. I have responded to you on the actual recipe page where I first encountered your comments. We will certainly be looking into this. Kim@KAF

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