Like many people, I love great puff pastry. I just have never had the knack for making it. While I remember my Mom and Grandmother making great pastry when I was a kid, when I started cooking I was never happy with the results so I just didn’t make it. Over the past couple of years, the availability of great frozen puff pastry that comes precut in rounds has brought dough back into my cooking. It is so clean & easy and the quality is so good that using store bought pastry is a no brainer.
Under normal circumstances I would have just continued using the frozen stuff, but an upcoming media project will involve using pastry and store bought stuff will not be acceptable. Time to do a bit of experimenting!
I came across a pretty simple looking recipe from Gourmet Magazine from back in October, 2004 and decided to give it a go. The intro says the pastry is rich and flaky because it uses butter, not shortening.
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) plus 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, frozen (who knows why they measure it that way!)
5 to 6 tablespoons ice water
Method:
Sift flour and salt into a large bowl.
Grate the frozen butter into the bowl and then toss gently with a fork. Don’t use hands, as the heat will melt the butter.
Drizzle 5 tablespoons of ice water around the mixture and continue mixing with a fork until the water is fully mixed in.
Test your mixture by gently squeezing a small handful into a ball. It should stay together in a ball without flaking apart. If yours still feels too dry, like mine did, then add another tablespoon of ice water. Be careful not to add too much water or work the dough too much as this will make the pastry tough.
Gather all of the dough together. The original recipe says to make a square with it. Good luck with that! Wrap your dough ball in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for about a half hour so that it chills through.
Lay the ball out on a floured surface and roll it into a 15″ x 8″ rectangle with a floured rolling pin. Then, fold the layer into 3, as if you were folding a letter. Wrap it up again and stick it back in the fridge.
Repeat the roll, fold and chill routine a couple more times and then chill for a full hour.
You now have dough that is ready to be rolled into whatever shape you need for your cooking experiment! The recipe says it makes about a pound of pastry dough. I assumed that would be enough for a pie top and bottom crust. I was wrong. It made enough for the top crust of a large Steak Pie.
The Steak Pie I was working on was supposed to bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees F. Unfortunately, at some point during the cooking process, I turned off the oven. I turned the heat back on and baked it longer. The result was a nice crust for a meat pie, but I would hardly call it puff pastry. I have a feeling this has more to do with my oops than the actual pastry.
Today I’m going to have a go at making another batch and making butter tarts. I’ll let you know how it goes!
