The Culinary Connection: A Journey Into Danish Flavors and Memories
Being Danish has never been a huge part of my culture or identity since that involves my dad’s side of the family and he never really talked about his family or Denmark. Now I’m not really sure if my dad was ashamed of his culture or if he just simply preferred a smaller and close-knit family, but I think it was the latter of the two which resulted in his neglect to share his family history with us. His mother, my grandmother immigrated to the US at a young age so my dad was born in the US so the connection to Danish cuisine was not very deep. The only reason I know this little bit of history of my family is because two summers ago I was fortunate enough to visit Denmark and experience my family there for the first time, where I was painted beautiful images of a family tree and a history I’ve never known. While there I was able to see lots of traditional danish cuisine, but I could only consume a little bit of it due to me being vegetarian and their dishes heavily rely on meat. When I was younger and with my dad still alive, he loved to cook and I was told that lots of it was danish food, but on this trip I realized that the food he would make was just the skeleton of what once used to be an American recipe, now disguised to seem danish. An example of this was his corn souffle. So with a lack of real Danish cuisine in my life, I decided to make something that I’ve only heard of, which is kringle. After looking up recipes I came to the consensus that kringle is a pastry with a texture similar to a croissant, where its flakey and buttery however it differs from the french pastry because there is a nutty almond filling and this buttery delight is shaped in an oval, almost like a racetrack, with a layer of icing covering it on top like a thin blanket.
Because I wanted to try and connect to my late dad and the little I know of his danish heritage, I chose to research what kringle is exactly and the history of it and how it has evolved over time. The ingredients of kringle play a huge role in showing the history of and evolution of the recipe. Originally, kringle was only filled with almonds and had a dense dough, but Austrian bakers added butter to the dough to create layers, making the dough flakey according to Bendtsen’s Bakery, a traditional danish bakery in Racine Wisconsin that specializes in kringle. The butter shows the history of kringle because this dish actually comes from German bakers from Austria who used the technique of rolling butter in between the thin layers of dough. This got to Denmark and kringles because when the bakers in Copenhagen went on strike, Austrian bakers replaced them and introduced their techniques and recipes. Later, to adapt to people’s wants and needs when it came to flavors, the bakers at O&H Bakery in Racine Wisconsin which is a traditional danish bakery explains why they changed the ingredients of the fillings, they started to include fruit and cream cheese to the ingredient list to offer a variety of sweet and savory kringles. Fortunately, I think the variety in flavors makes the kringle more appealing because it gives everyone a kringle flavor they will love. By just changing the fillings of the kringle to add variety, it just adds more flavor and preference to the consumer. Today, the bakers making the kringle at O&H stress the importance of sticking with their original recipes because “everything is handmade from scratch, and we still use the three-day preparation method for our Kringle dough to deliver that flaky pastry that our customers have come to know and love”. The baker’s commitment to perfect their flakey dough shows us that while the fillings of kringle might change, everything else stays the same. The techniques of making kringle did evolve in the early years of kringle, but not much has changed since then. Making the dough seems a little tricky since it requires it to be handmade which I have never done before, but I believe that if a girl like me, someone with no baking experience, can follow the directions then it should come out perfect. Now that I understand that food evolves due to flavor preferences, I am debating if I want to honor my culture and follow a more traditional recipe or go for a more modern take and do a filling with fruit and possibly add cream cheese.The traditional version is very authentic and honors my culture, but the butterscotch filling doesn’t sound the most appetizing.The raspberry version seems like would taste better and fresher, and it sounds appetizing, but I fear that I wouldn’t be honoring my culture since it’s not really authentic.
Ultimately, I chose to go with the authentic recipe which is in the cookbook Delectably Danish by Julie Jensen McDonald which was my danish grandma’s cookbook and follow the butterscotch filling because I feel more connected to that recipe since it belonged to my Bedste and I’m doing this assignment to connect with that side of my family and embrace my danish heritage. I knew this recipe was the one for me because I needed a trustworthy recipe that has a good dough and butter ratio to make the dough perfectly flakey because thats what people know kringle for. I didn’t choose a recipe with a fruit filling simply because I didn’t know how I would make a raspberry filling that would taste good because it’s not raspberry season, also it strayed too far away from the traditional recipe for my liking. Within this cookbook they had a recipe for kringle from O&H Bakery in Racine, WI which is a traditional danish bakery I referenced earlier, which happens to be the recipe I’m following. With the knowledge that O&H is a trustworthy and authentic source, I decided to follow their recipe which includes brown sugar, butter, salt, cinnamon, and egg white for the filling to make a butterscotch. I will be keeping this recipe the same as mentioned in the book without tweaking it to my liking. Here’s how the making and serving of the kringle went, I started off by making two 8inx8in squares of butter by softening and pressing the butter into the squares then popped it into the freezer to chill it. While those chilled I made the dough which required dissolving yeast in water then adding warm milk, sugar, salt, lemon extract, and an egg and I mixed that and added flour then mixed once again until smooth. Then I got to the part that was a little bit tricky, I rolled the dough out to 8inx12in and placed one of the chilled butter squares on two thirds of the dough and folded the top and bottom thirds over the middle then folded the sides in to make what looked like a brick of dough, then I chilled that for 30 minutes. After chiling I rolled the dough into a 8inx12in rectangle and repeated the previous step with the second square of chilled butter. After I realized how simple this step was I was also able to realize how satisfying it was to roll and fold the chilled butter and watch the layers form as the butter slowly softened. Then I had to chill the dough for two hours, and after chilling I had to cut the dough into two equal parts, at this point I realized this recipe made two kringles so I threw out the second half of the dough since I didn’t need it. Then I prepared the filling which required me to mix brown sugar, butter, salt, cinnamon, and an egg white together until smooth. After this I rolled the first half of dough out to a 20inx6in rectangle and gently lined the middle with the butterscotch filling and then folded over the sides over the middle, pinching the edges together. From this I transferred the almost finished kringle to a baking sheet and shaped it into an oval and pinched the two ends together and let it sit and rise for one hour while covered. Now it was finally time to bake it, after rising for an hour I popped the kringle in the oven at 350 degrees for 20ish minutes until it was baked to perfection. Unfortunately, some of my filling leaked out through the bottom of the kringle due to faulty seams, but this didn’t take away from the final product. So I let the kringle chill overnight and the following morning I iced it with a mixture of powdered sugar, water, and vanilla.
Now let’s get to how the kringle tasted. My mom and I were the first ones to try it, but neither of us have had a kringle before this so we didn’t know if it tasted like how it was supposed to, but all we knew was that it tasted really good. The flavor was sweet with a little hint of lemon due to the lemon extract in the dough and the dough was nice and buttery, but a little dense but it didn’t alter the taste of it. The following morning my boyfriend, Anthony, came over and he tried the kringle because he’s had a traditional kringle before and he also agreed that it was pretty good but a little dense. Overall making the kringle was a learning experience for me since this was my first time making a dish like this and I think it went pretty good for being my first time. Sure, there are some things that I could change if I make this again, such as making sure my seams are more secure when I pinch the dough together to secure the filling and maybe I could add less filling next time, it will all just be a process of trial and error. I made this dish to try and connect to my late dad and I mainly felt connected to him when I was working in the kitchen because he loved to cook and he basically lived in the kitchen, I also felt connected to him when I was using his marble slab to roll the dough and shape the kringle, this is because my dad got the slab from a close friend and up until his death he would use it when cooking sometimes. However, I did feel close to my Danish relatives and heritage while making this because it’s a traditional recipe so I’m guessing if any of them made this dish before we shared similar learning experiences which makes me feel content. So this entire experience not only helped me feel connected to my dad once again, but it also helped me feel a connection to my danish relatives which I would’ve never guessed would happen, but I’m thankful it did
