Danish the way to do it
Think Denmark, think Danish pastries. Buttery, flaky, light-as-air, a Danish is a multilayered, laminated sweet pastry in the viennoiserie tradition. Typically pigeonholed into a small slot across the world, a Danish pastry seems synonymous with the custard-filled spandauer—a staple at breakfast buffets across the world. But a recent trip to Copenhagen revealed that there’s more: kanelsnegle (cinnamon snail), kanelstang (cinnamon stick), tebirkes (pastry with poppy seeds), brunsviger (topped with caramelised brown sugar), and hindbærsnitte (raspberry slice) are among some of the Danish pastry varieties available.
Food historian Nina Bauer says the Danish pastry is called “wienerbrod” in Danish, literally “Viennese bread”, because the inspiration and baking techniques came from Viennese bakers. Local lore suggests the Danish pastry was born amid a strike among bakery workers in Denmark in 1850.
The strike led bakery owners to hire foreign bakers, including those from Austria, who brought their own baking techniques. The end of the strike led Danish bakers to adopt Austrian recipes, creating the famous Danish pastry.
But Bauer says the hiring of foreign bakers started long before 1850. “The history of the Danish goes back to the late 18th century when many bakers came from Austria and Germany. The Danish learned the art of laminating dough, a technique that made it light and airy. This inspired many Danish bakers to travel to Austria to study the art of Viennese baking,” she says.
NC Albeck, a baker at the Danish court, is said to have travelled to Austria around 1840 to learn the secrets of Viennese baking. On his return, he used the Austrian yeast-leavened puff-pastry dough to create wienerbrod horn, or Viennese bread horns.
Many other bakers followed, combining varied techniques with different kinds of fillings, including nuts, raisins, spices, jam, apple, marzipan, and custard.
The recipe for a true-blue Danish only has a few ingredients—a yeast-leavened dough of flour, milk, eggs, and sugar—but the process is long. The dough is rolled out thinly, covered with butter of rullemargarine (a baker’s margarine), and then folded and rolled several times, ultimately creating 27 layers.
“The 27 layers are one of the hallmarks of true Danish pastry. The signature folds create a pastry that is light and crispy on the outside, rich and buttery inside,” says Amalie Holm, at Hart Bakery, one of the most popular bakeries in Copenhagen.

Seasonal pastries such as rabarberhorn (rhubarb horns), frøsnapper (seed snapper), and fastelavnsbolle (Shrovetide bun) add to the variety of Danish pastries. Skt Peders Bageri, one of the oldest bakeries in Copenhagen, offers its own special pastry every Wednesday: onsdagssnegle, which translates to “Wednesday snails”.
Guxi Maria Abel, a popular tour guide in Copenhagen, says some of the pastries, like the cardamom snail/bun, are made of a regular sweetened wheat yeast dough, and “are not in the layered Viennese tradition”. “The sweet dough bun was the Danish pastry style before the Viennese pastry, with layers of thin dough with butter in between,” she says.
The Danish pastry is—much like the Smørrebrød (open-faced sandwich on rye)—a symbol of Danish hygge. “It’s what we serve when friends or family come over on a Saturday or Sunday,” adds Abel.
At the end of the day, a Danish is more than just a pastry. It has a strong social connotation. “It would be sad to buy a big piece of Danish pastry just to sit at home alone to eat it. It is something you (literally) bring to the table when you want to spoil people you appreciate,” she says. Appropriate for a feast, shall we say?