savoury viennoiserie - can palmiers, kouign-amann and danish all go the cheese route?

Baking & Technique savourypalmiersdanishviennoiserie

Cafe crowd here skews savoury and I'm tired of only offering sweet pastry. Which of the laminated family actually convert - palmiers? kouign-amann? danish? And what changes beyond "remove sugar, add cheese"?

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2 replies

All three convert, with different levels of identity crisis :)

Palmiers go savoury BEAUTIFULLY - spread the sheet with cheese, garlic, chilli flakes or pesto instead of sugar, fold and slice exactly the same. That's essentially the cheese-straw family wearing a fancier shape. Zero compromise.

Danish converts cleanly too: same docked-centre architecture, but swap the pastry cream for cream cheese whipped with herbs and spices, or a quiche-style custard poured thin. Sun-dried tomato, olives, sautéed veg go on partway through the bake so they don't scorch. One finishing change - savoury bakes get brushed with OIL, not nappage (glaze on a cheese danish is a crime of confusion).

Kouign-amann is the philosophical one: its entire identity is caramelised sugar lamination, so a fully savoury version stops being kouign-amann. But a sugar-less, cheese-laminated version bakes into a gorgeous flaky cheese whirl - just christen it something honest on the menu.

Your savoury counter basically builds itself from one laminated dough. The cafe crowd won't know what hit them.

the cheese whirl formerly known as kouign-amann is going on my specials board with exactly that backstory

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