Puff Pastry

Following in the footsteps of the last post...I went back to folding butter in dough to make beautiful layered puff pastry. I've never even used commercial puff pastry before, but I did get the opportunity to taste test between this one and the commercial one. If you've got the time, I totally recommend making your own b/c it tastes so much better.

Rumor has it that the origins of puff pastry was, like many things, an accident. An apprentice making bread realized that he had forgotten to put butter into his dough. So he decided to try to add the butter in later by folding it in. But clearly, the results were very different and the layers puffed up. Chef Jeff at my pastry school jokes that he was probably fired after the discovery and his master took all the credit.

With puff pastry...you can make quite a few delicious treats. More recipes to come (with pictures!) but here are the basics.

Puff Pastry Dough
1 1/2 lb ap flour
8 oz cake flour
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
1 pint cold water
1/2 lb soft butter

1) Mix flours together.
2) Dissolve salt and sugar in cold water, set aside.
3) Rub butter into flour until butter disappears (will look sandy when done)
4) Fold the water in gently and set dough aside while preparing the butter.

Note: This "dough" will be really ugly. Don't overwork it...it should look pretty crumbly.

Butter
2 lbs butter
4 oz ap flour

1) Sprinkle flour onto work surface. Coat butter with flour.
2) Pound butter to soften it. Knead it into a square about 1 inch thick and 6-7" on each side.

Forming the puff pastry dough
1) Dust work surface with flour and turn dough out onto it. Press dough into a rough square about 1 inch thick. Leaving the center alone, roll out the four corners into flaps about 1/4 inch thick.
2) Place butter square on the dough. Fold flaps over the butter without stretchign them. Seal dough so that butter doesn't show.

Rolling/Folding Dough
1) On a floured work surface, roll dough into rectangular shape until about 1/4 inch thick. Dust with flour as necessary to keep it from getting sticky.
2) Fold both ends of the dough in towards the center, then fold in half to make 4 layers - which will resemble a book.
3) Position the dough so that the "spine" of the dough book is on the left so that you're rolling in the opposite direction. Dust the surface with flour again and roll out to a rectangle about 12"x30". Fold over like in #2.
4) Wrap dough in plastic and let it rest in fridge up to about 1 hour.
5) Repeat #3 two more times, resting for at least an hour in between.
6) Rest the dough at least 4 hours before use.

xoxo,
lemonie