For love of Danish, we’re joyful each morning

Danish pastry is really French and was invented about 350 years ago (according to the Danish baker’s union) by a French apprentice baker named Claudius Gelee. He forgot to add the butter to the flour, and had to add lumps of butter, folding it into the dough. To everyone’s surprise, the result was the lightest dough anyone had seen in France

It is a morning staple in the United States. To order it, you don’t even have to say pastry — just Danish.

Europeans like their Danish lighter, more elegant.

In Denmark, no party or leisurely Sunday breakfast is complete without the pastry, which the Danes call Viennese. “It’s like the Danish flag, which we fly every time we celebrate something,” said Merete Thomsen, a secretary in Copenhagen.

To Germans, the pastry is a “Copenhagener.” In 1962, Gelee opened cafe in Paris. He served his pastry, which the French called “a thousand leaves.” He had success in Florence as well; there the Italians called it “folded pastry.” From Italy, the bakers took the pastry to Austria. It then travelled to Denmark where, when replacements for striking bakers were imported from Austria, it was coined “Viennese bread.”

After that, the pastry became know as “Danish” to the rest of the world. That probably occurred because of the emigration of Danish bakers to many countries.

The Danish was introduced to the U.S. in 1915 by Lauritz Klitteng when he prepared it for the wedding of President Woodrow Wilson and it was featured in many periodicals. He then met Herman Gertner, who owned five Broadway restaurants, and convinced him it would be a hit in his establishments .

Whenever I have a Danish with my coffee I think of the following story and wonder how my husband Jerry’s first wife didn’t kill him.