Eggless Danish Pastry Envelopes, Blueberry Jam Envelopes

          After coming back to India from the US, one other thing that I missed is the Puff Pastry that we get back there. Till date, I am not able to get readymade puff pastry here, so I was thinking of doing it from scratch, but then, kept putting it off, thinking that it was a hard and tedious job. But I was proved wrong, thanks to Gayathri and the Eggless Baking Challenges that we take up every month. Yeah, for this month we had to try our hands at making Danish Pastry, which involves ' Laminating the Dough ' and the repeated rolling and folding process. The step by step pictures might make it look like a very lengthy procedure, but it's actually not that very hard, this is the first time that I made this and I am very satisfied with the end result, the Danish Pastries tasted absolutely delicious..

Need To Have

• All Purpose Flour/ Maida - 1 cup
• Unsalted Butter - 100 gms
• Instant Yeast - 3/4 teaspoon
• Sugar - 1 tablespoon
• Salt - 1/4 teaspoon
• Curd/ Yogurt - 1 tablespoon
• Milk - 1/3 cup + 2 teaspoons
• Blueberry Jam - 6 teaspoons
• Confectioners Sugar/ Icing Sugar for Dusting
• Milk for brushing the dough before baking 

Recipe Source here and here and here

Method
          I am going to divide the process into 2 steps :
Laminating The Dough And Making The Danish Pastry Dough

          Take the flour, sugar, salt, instant yeast, warm the curd slightly and add to this. According to the instructions for the instant yeast, I had to warm up the milk and then add, so adding the slightly hot milk, bring everything together to form a sticky dough and leave it for about a half an hour to rise.

           In the meantime, take the butter ( left outside for about 10 minutes ), place it on a plastic sheet, sprinkle some flour over it, cover it with another plastic sheet. Then using a rolling pin, pound the butter, when the butter spreads, bring it together and pound it one more time, shape it up into a rectangle, cover with a plastic wrap and leave it in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes.

          Now take the dough, roll it out into a circle, take the butter and place it on it and fold the edges of the dough over the butter slab and seal it as shown in the picture.

          Dusting some flour, place the dough ( the sealed side facing down ) and roll it into a rectangle, then fold it as shown, leave this in the fridge for 20 to 30 minutes, the laminating process is done. After 30 minutes, take the dough out, roll it out into a rectangle, then fold it the same way as above ( this is called a turn ), again refrigerate the dough, do this for another 3 times ( 3 turns ), refrigerating the dough for 20 to 30 minutes between each turn.

          Now roll out the dough, divide into 3 parts, I put 2 parts in the freezer for future use and used to 1 part for making the Danish Pastries.

Shaping And Baking The Danish Pastries

          Roll out the dough to about roughly 18 cm x 10 cm and divide into 3 parts.

          Take one part, fold it into a triangle and make slits as shown.

          Open the triangle, take the 2 sides and cross over, tucking one side into the other, as shown in the picture.

           Repeat the above with the other 2 parts, arrange on a baking tray, sprinkle some water, cover and let the dough rise ( for about 2 hours ). Then, press down a little in the center to form a depression, place a little jam, brush the dough with milk and bake it at 190 C for 15 to 20 minutes, till it turns golden brown. Remove, cool it, dust it with some confectioners sugar and serve.

Note
You'll get 9 Danish Pastries from the 1 cup flour, I made only 3 since I used only 1/3 of the dough.
Whatever yeast you use, instant or active dry, follow the instructions given in the packets.
At any point while laminating and make the Danish Pastry dough, if you feel that the dough is very sticky and the butter is oozing out, keep it in the fridge for another 20 minutes, them remove and do the rolling.
The total number for Danish Pastry is 3, I made it 4 times, if you want you can make even 5 to 7 turns and see whichever works for you.
The thought of consuming 100 gms of butter in one day ( also since it's the first time, I didn't want to make too many ) between 3 people was too much for me, so I made only 3 pastries.