Spandauer (Danish Pastry with Custard or Jam)

A Popular Pastry

Spandauer are a very popular Danish pastry, and you can find multiple kinds of spandauer in every bakery in Denmark. Spandauer is a name that comes from the name of a part of Berlin, called Spandau. Apparently, there was a prison there in 19th and 20th centuries that had four towers and walls all around it, which is why this pastry has four corners and walls around the custard or jam.

While “Spandauer” doesn’t have a direct English translation, these are what Americans call “Danishes,” although in Denmark you will never find one of these filled with cheese (lol, sorry America). And the funny thing is that in Denmark, we call these pastries “wienerbrød,” or “Vienna bread,” because Austrian bakers were actually the first to bring the pastries and new baking methods to Denmark.

Pastry Dough Basics

Spandauer are circular pastries, consisting of a yeasted, laminated dough filled with marzipan filling (remonce), and topped with a dollop of cream or jam. The dough is not easy to make, but once you master it, you will be able to make a multitude of other Danish pastries! Other pastry recipes on our blog that use this type of dough include tebirkes, kanelsnegle, frøsnapper, chokoladesnegle, and wienerbrødsstang.

We now have two pastry dough recipe on our website: the 6 hour faster version and the original, overnight proofing version! Either one is delicious, and while laminating dough is a bit of a project, it’s a great activity for the weekend!

Lamination

So, what does “laminated dough” mean? You start with making a regular yeasted dough, similar to what you would use to bake fødselsdagsboller or kanelsnegle. Depending on if you are making the faster version or the overnight version, you let the dough rise at room temperature or in the fridge. Then, you roll that dough out into a square, place a block of butter in the middle, and fold in the corners of the dough so that the butter is enclosed.

Then begins the lamination. You roll the dough out into a rectangle and complete a letter fold. Think of your dough as being split into thirds, then fold top over middle, bottom over top. You repeat this rolling out and letter fold process two more times (three total). This gives you 27 layers in your dough, making the final pastry flaky and buttery.

Tips to a Successful Pastry Bake

Many things can go wrong in this recipe, so don’t worry if your final product doesn’t turn out perfect. It’ll still be delicious! The biggest problem we face when making these pastries is the butter leaking out when we bake them. This is not great because it results in large gaps in the pastry where the butter has leaked out. The pastries also sit in a pool of butter and often come out fried on the bottom and far too greasy.

Type of Butter

So, a few tips to avoid this! First, we would recommend using a European butter with a higher fat percentage. European butter contains less water, and will be easier to work with and more elastic than American butter. This helps with rolling the dough out without it causing you problems, like breaking apart in the dough. However, if this is too expensive, you can try American style butters – just know that it may be more difficult and may cause leakage of the butter!

You also want to make sure that your butter is not too cold when you enclose it in the dough. This could cause leakage problems later on, because when you roll it out, the butter may break up and you won’t have smooth sheets of butter between your layers of dough. So, carefully follow the butter folding step on our pastry dough recipes to help with this!

Proofing the Pastries

Finally, proofing is super important in the process of avoiding butter leakage. Under-proofed or over-proofed pastries will leak butter, so you need to get it as close to perfect as possible. We like to go by look instead of timing, but you should give them at least 2 hours. The pastries should double in size and be almost wobbly when you touch them. Our recipe below includes more info, but pay close attention to these steps if you want the perfect Danish pastry! If you make our recipe, be sure to leave a comment and a rating below! And tag us on Instagram if you post a photo!

Watch Our Video

We made a full length video on how to make Spandauer, and you can watch it below! This video doesn’t include the lamination of the pastry dough, but you can watch the Danish pastry dough video here. If you like visual cues and demonstrations, definitely give both videos a watch!