Tuesday Dinners

Step By Step Directions

We are going to begin by mixing in some salt with our flour. If you’re using unsalted butter then feel free to add a little more salt during this step.

Also, if you haven’t already throw your half cup of water in the fridge to chill. Making puff pastry is a temperature game and cold water works best.

Now we are going to add our butter. The shape doesn’t necessarily matter so long as it is able to get a coating of flour around it fairly easily. I opted for thin slices of butter but if you want to do shavings or cubes feel free. Add them to your bowl.

Now you’ll want to mix the butter in so that it is completely coated in flour and just starting to soften. We never want the butter to begin to melt but we don’t want it to be completely separate from the flour either. If you want to mix with a utensil that will work but it’s easier to feel the consistency of the butter if you mix with your hands. You should start to have a very shaggy dough.

Once a shaggy dough is achieved you’ll want to add in your cold water. This will allow everything to come together.

Now you want to mix everything together. There should be no loose butter or flour at this point. Everything should be in a solid ball.

If at any point the butter is too soft feel free to throw the dough in the fridge and let it cool. You don’t need to work fast for this recipe to work but if you feel the need to cool off then your dough probably does as well.

Once your dough is solidly formed then cover it either in the bowl or with plastic wrap and let it chill in the fridge for between 2 and 24 hours.

Now it is time to create the layers in our pastry. You will want to flatten your dough out into a rough rectangle shape. You can either use a rolling pin, a flat sided bottle or your hands if you want to. Just try to keep it relatively cool.

Now take a rough third of the dough and fold it over on itself.

Repeat with the remaining third of dough.

Now you’re going to turn the dough 90 degrees and flatten the dough again, then fold it in thirds, then turn it 90 degrees, etc.

Do that process at least 6 times before covering it and throwing it back in the fridge for at least 1 hour and up to a full day.

Now you’ll want to flatten out the dough into a single thin sheet and decide how you want to shape it.

This is also the time to preheat your oven. Please put it to 400 degrees.

Whatever shapes you want to make won’t do anything other than impact the baking time. If you want a flat sheet those are great for showing off your layers. If you want a filled pastry or a roll of some kind then just put your filling on the inside and make sure it’s tucked. If you feel like braiding the dough then cut it into strips and do so. The world is your oyster.

*Note that the dough will spring open as it is baking, so pay attention to the shapes below and see what became of them in the final picture.

The reason it’s called puff pastry is because the liquid in the butter will turn into a steam and cause the dough to “puff” up and create the layers that everyone knows it for.

To aid this we want to make sure that the oven is hot when we put our dough in, otherwise we might not get the best puff that we can.

Lastly, if you want you can throw an egg wash over the top of the dough (egg + water), this will give it the golden brown color that people often associate with puff pastry.

Cook the dough for between 15 and 30 minutes depending on the shape you chose. Those pictured below were 15 but if you’re baking the entire sheet as a whole it will likely be 30.

Enjoy.

Variations

• Use whatever filling you may want, you could make a strudel, sausage rolls, pretty much anything that has a pastry coating
• After forming your shapes stick them back in the fridge for a couple of minutes to get the temperature of the butter back down

Unsolicited Feedback

• WK: This doesn’t taste like the stuff from the store.
• SA: When I was in France we wouldn’t even feed this to the dogs.
• CL: It’s baked butter, how could it be bad?