When bakery workers in Denmark went on a strike in 1850, their employers hired pastry workers from Vienna. Not familiar with the Danish recipes, the latter started making their traditional goodies including what is today known as the ‘Danish’. When the strike ended the flaky Austrian pastry had already become popular in the country, so Danish bakers had to learn how to make it themselves.
They adjusted the recipe to their country’s traditions by increasing the amount of fat and adding extra eggs in order to ensure it lived up to the Danes.’ standard They named it Wienerbrød and kept serving it at every bakery in Denmark.
Danes who began to migrate to the US and several European countries in the early 1900s they brought eventually introduced their famous pastry. As locals were not aware of the strike, Austrian bakers simply referred to the pastry as ‘Danish’ or ‘Copenhagener’.
Legend has it that the first Danish pastry was made by mistake. When Claudius Gelee, a French apprentice baker, realized he had forgotten to add butter to the flour, he decided to put chunks of it in the dough. Expecting to be fired for the mistake, instead, he was praised for it as his boss and colleagues were astonished. It was the lightest dough the French bakers had ever eaten.
Seeing how much the bakery’s clients loved it, in 1622, Gelee opened a café in Paris serving ‘the thousands leave’ pastry and some years later another one opened in Florence. From Italy, the recipe traveled to Austria and the rest is history.
Danish pastries as consumed in Denmark have different shapes and names. Some are topped with chocolate, pearl sugar, glacé icing, and/or slivered nuts and they may be stuffed with a variety of ingredients such as jam or preserves (usually apple or prune), remonce, marzipan, and/or custard.
Shapes are numerous, including circles with filling in the middle (known in Denmark as Spandauers), figure-eights, spirals (known as snails), and the pretzel-like kringles.