Puff pastry is a delectable, yet fussy thing to prepare. Preparing a really good puff pastry dough amounts to adhering to and religiously following a few very basic, yet very important techniques. As with pate brisee, the list of ingredients that you’ll need in order to make a basic puff pastry dough is not extensive at all, in fact, you basically use the exact same ingredients…all-purpose flour, butter, salt, and ice water. There are however, two very important differences between these two doughs. First, the ratio of flour to butter in puff pastry dough is 2:1, as opposed to 3:1 for pate brisee. Second, the classic method for making a puff pastry dough is much more involved than pate brisee. Puff pastry is designed to be an incredibly light and flaky dough, made up of many (about 730) individual layers of dough and butter. As the butter melts during baking, it creates small pockets between the layers of dough. Water contained within the flour particles in the dough converts to steam, which fills these pockets and causes the dough to rise, or puff. It is the careful folding and rolling of the dough that creates these layers and allows the puffing to happen. It’s all in the technique.
Chef D would review two methods for making puff pastry…the classic method and a method for making what’s called ‘semi-puff’ pastry dough. In her own experiences, she noticed remarkably little difference in the amount of puffing achieved between the two variations. Let’s talk about ‘semi-puff’ pastry dough first. The method is actually very similar to making pate brisee. In fact, with the exception of the additional butter in the puff pastry, the two methods are exactly the same until you get to the point where you’d ‘frisage’ (flatten out with the heel of your hand) the dough. That step is eliminated when making puff pastry. Instead, you bring puff pastry dough together with your hands and using a pastry scraper, try to make it as square as possible, then chill it for at least 45 to 60 minutes (the longer the better). Just like with a pate brisee, gluten is the enemy here so we need to take steps to minimize its development. Cold hinders gluten development, hence the upcoming frequent chilling/resting periods. After this initial resting period, the dough must be rolled out into a rectangle and folded in on itself sort of like a book. This process is called ‘turning’ and is repeated one more time before the dough must rest in the ‘fridge for another 30 minutes. After the second resting period, the dough is rolled and shaped and taken through 2 more turns, then chilled another 30 minutes. While performing the ‘turns’, the chef must take great care to ensure that the edges of the puff pastry are straight or else different parts of the dough will ultimately have different numbers of butter/dough layers. After this latest rest, the dough is ready for its final shaping and then, you guessed it, more chilling. Then it can finally be baked. In addition to hindering the formation of gluten, all of these additional chilling points serve another purpose…to keep the butter cool, which prevents it from oozing out of the dough during the ‘turning’ phases and during baking. If the butter were to just ooze out of the dough, then it wouldn’t be able to create pockets, and that could hinder the ‘puffing’ that occurs during baking.
The classical method of making puff pastry dough is similar to the semi-puff method, but it’s bit more labor intensive. You basically fluff (papillon) together just the flour/salt and water (although you can ‘break’ just a bit of butter into the flour first). Once this has been combined and shaped into a square, it must rest in the ‘fridge for 30 minutes. While this is resting, you must work the butter (with just a bit of flour added) into a smooth paste, shape it into a square and chill it so that it achieves roughly the same temperature as the flour/water mixture. Then the flour/water mixture must be rolled out so that it is just big enough to be folded around the butter square. Once the flour/water mass has been folded over the butter square, it all gets chilled for 30 min. Then you perform a total of 6 turns, with a 30 minute chilling period between every 2 turns. From there, roll the dough into its final shape, chill, and bake it. Why go through the extra work to make the classic version of pastry dough when for the most part the ‘semi-puff’ variety works fine? That is a great question, one that I don’t remember anyone in class asking. If I remember, I’ll ask Chef S on Monday.
My recipe called for small puff pastry rectangles to be baked, sliced in half, and filled. Chef D told me that she didn’t care if I used the classic method or the semi-puff method to make my dough. In the interest of time (and because I am not always a glutton for punishment), I opted to make the semi-puff version. My dough was a little less than 1/4″ thick before I baked it. Here’s what it looked like when it came out of the oven:
My ‘puff’ was ok according to Chef D. It definitely could’ve risen more than it did. I think that was more a function of overworking it than my use of the ‘semi-puff’ method. But my pastries were light and flaky and rose fairly evenly. I stuffed my puff pastries with a combination of shrimp, scallops, carrots, and peas, all mixed in with a fennel, onion, and cream puree:
I rather enjoyed these. Chef D remarked that I cooked my seafood perfectly. The only complaint…I added too much white pepper to the dish. Oh yeah, and I smelled like seafood for the rest of the day.
Next we have an Onion Tart:
The onions were caramelized, giving them a deep, golden brown color. They went into a pre-baked puff pastry and the whole thing was topped with gruyere cheese and baked again.
Two different kinds of Palmiers were prepared. The savory variety was filled with an olive and caper mixture prior to baking:
And the classic, unadorned version. You may also know these as ‘Elephant Ears’:
A Papillon filled with almonds and crushed macaroons:
Sacristans (aka Cocoa Pecan Cinnamon Twists:
And the show-stopper. The Napoleon:
This particular Napoleon was filled with chocolate pastry cream and a bananas/rum/sugar mixture, then topped with a quick fondant and caramel sauce. It was every bit as tasty as it looks. And so there you have it…puff pastry. It is a total pain-in-arse to prepare, but I’d say the results are worth it. I can’t comment on any of the varieties of pre-made puff pastry dough on the market. Chef D did mention that lots of them are prepared with shortening as opposed to butter, I suppose in part because it is cheaper and it has a higher melting point than butter, thus making it less subject to ‘oozing’ while the dough is formed. But since shortening has no real flavor and since good puff pastry dough doesn’t taste like anything other than butter, expect a store-bought dough to be missing something special.
