I haven't made puff pastry since culinary school, which was an embarrassingly long time ago. I decided to try again yesterday, and spent a cold and snowy afternoon rolling and turning and watching IIHF Junior hockey on TV. Making the pastry wasn't as tricky as I remembered, and taking it out of the fridge every half an hour or so and rolling was fine too. I had a few butter escapes, but nothing too serious. I baked some of the pastry today and it definitely puffed, so yay! What did I make, you wonder? Well, you'll just have to come back tomorrow to see. It's a Tuesday thing. For now, have a look at a few puff pastry photos. I used a recipe from Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan.
This is right at the start: incorporating the butter block into the flour/water/salt dough.
Next comes the rolling and folding process, called turning. 6 turns are supposed to give you 994 layers of dough and 993 layers of butter, hence mille feuilles in French. I tried to count, but lost track. I have a math teacher friend and her students working on it. This is the 5th turn completed:
So, after one more turn and a night in the fridge, this is the finished puff pastry. I can definitely see layers!
Come back tomorrow to see what I made with ⅕ of the dough. Any suggestions on what to do with the rest?
5 comments:
A wellington of some sort - beef, salmon, chicken, whatever. How did I not think of that before?
i envy you so much for going to culinary school to learn such things. i am self taught but would love to learn profesionally. i love that pic of the pastry stacked on top of each other.
It looks fabulous! I made puff pastry in a class once and keep meaning to make it at home, but I still haven't.
What a beautiful dough with such perfectly distinct layers. Well done! It's funny, I was talking about puff pastry yesterday; everyone agreed. The stuff is magic.
I just came across your blog and I love it :)
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