Kringle pastry is a Danish pastry with a rich, flaky texture and oval shape, traditionally filled with nuts or fruit. It originated in Denmark and is popular in the American Midwest. It can be made at home or purchased from specialty bakeries. The dough is complex to make, but shortcuts can be taken.
Kringle pastry is a type of Danish pastry that is worked and kneaded in such a way that it becomes light, flaky and very rich, almost like French flaky pastry. Traditionally, the kringle pastry is used to make a cup of coffee with a round filling, also known as a kringle. Kringles are very popular in the American Midwest, where a number of Danes settled during the 1800s. Specialty bakeries are often willing to ship their kringle to people in areas without a ready supply of this food, and it can also be made at home.
The base of the dough is a rich, buttery dough that is allowed to rest overnight before being kneaded, rolled and folded in a complex process that creates thin layers in the dough. As the dough cooks, these layers separate slightly, turning into a thick, flaky pastry. The dough is filled with ingredients such as chopped nuts or fruit, and is shaped into an oval before baking. To serve, cooks cut wedges of kringle dough out of the oval.
The original kringle was ostensibly baked into a pretzel-like shape, but over time the criss-cross folds of the dough have been eliminated in favor of a simpler oval. Almonds and marzipan were the filling of choice for early versions of kringle, but today a wide variety of ingredients are used including other nuts, cherries, raspberries and apricots. Many cooks sprinkle icing or icing sugar on their kringle after baking, to make it especially sweet.
Danish immigrants to the United States brought the kringle pastry with them in the 1800s, and several cities in the American Midwest are famous for their kringle. These regions sometimes sponsor annual cooking contests, along with attempts to break kringle size records. Fans of this Danish food argue that the best kringle pastry takes three days to complete from start to finish if it’s rested and assembled correctly, though some bakeries prefer to shorten the process significantly in the interest of being more efficient.
Because kringle pastry is difficult to prepare, home cooks may want to consider cheating and using commercial puff pastry dough or a rich bread dough like that used for brioche, as this will drastically reduce assembly time. The dough should be rolled out into a long narrow rectangle so that the filling can be cooked in a long line down the middle, then it can be rolled into a tube which can be folded into the desired oval shape and brushed with egg before baking. firing to a glossy finish.
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