Puff Pastry. Otherwise Known As Pate Feuilletee

O Queen of all doughs! O Daunting dough! O dough of great expectation!

Puff Pastry. Pâte Feuilletée

Thousand Layer Dough.

It even sounds impossible.

Two amazing women can help you figure out how to make Puff Pastry at home should you wish to embark on such an expedition as this.

Ashley E. Rodriguez has an intriguingly photographed step-by-step Puff Pastry demo complete with a video on Artisan Sweets.

And the too cute Fanny of Foodbeam created a hand drawn-photography tutorial for what she dubs pâte feuilletée 101.

Both blogs will put your fears at ease, and also remind you of something I try to pass on here at eggbeater: recipes are guides and inherent in them are methods for which; if you can grasp, open your baking repertoire beyond your wildest dreams and expectations.

In London I saw and worked with a puff pastry the likes of which Fred Flinstone could have created. It was called Rough Puff and massive chunks of butter the size of my fists were interspersed within massive sidewalk-size slabs of glutinous dough. The puff I was sheeting weighed more than me and we created hundreds of pastries with it when all was said and done.

Puff pastry has endless applications. One of my favourite personality traits of puff is that it grows into what you've placed on top of it. Hence tarte tâtin and vol-au-vents. Once puff is made it can be frozen for quite a long time, wrapped tight. You may even roll it out, cut out shapes and freeze those quirky pieces for a later date.

Puff pastry can also be re-rolled once. (Although the roll out of scraps will always produce a less puffy, slightly tougher end result.) There are a lot of doughs that cannot be re-rolled, depending on their flour to fat ratio. In professional kitchens we love any product/ component we can get as much we can from it. For every department pays for every gram of food, whether it goes on the garbage or on a plate.

This is why certain pastries are round and some are square or rectangular. Some "waste" can be re-absorbed into the department but some can not. For example cake crumbs can become a garnish for another cake or be added to the dough of a dry cookie or be creamed with butter to make a crumb/streusel topping... Thinking like this is the difference between a basic baker and a great pastry chef.

I have always revered puff pastry. All laminated doughs, but especially feuilletee. It can quadruple its size in the oven. It shatters upon contact with your teeth. it can do its thing rolled thick or very very thin. It can be stretched and pulled and punded and flattened and caramelized and dried and smeared with creams or blanket a soup bowl.

Puff pastry is form and function, craft and art.

I hope both Fanny & Ashley can inspire you to make puff pastry soon. If nothing else think of it as the next great pastry adventure!

Comments

[Judith in Umbria]

I am so bad! I tell my readers to order raw it from a good pastry shop if they want the real thing and not the supermarket thing. When making a dinner party I just don't have the energy or patience to fold and roll, sorry. OTH, I bone animals with a flick of an eyelash. Maybe puff pastry is too zen for someone like me?

[Malini]

Puff pastry is my mistress... teasing, demanding commitment of time and muscle. Often I cop out and make the blitz version.

[Elsewhere]

Is that "rough puff" what they use at St. John's for the Eccles Cakes? Those Eccles are nothing at all like puff pastry as I know it, but wonderful chewy stuff nonetheless.

Hello Elsewhere, I have heard them say they use puff pastry at St. John's but I have not met the actual dough in person so I don't know if its proper or rough. Good question, though. I imagine the people who know the secret are very proud, as their Eccles Cake is like none other. ~ Shuna

[Colleen]

Shuna!

I was just thinking about attempting puff pastry for the first time this coming weekend. I also found a video how-to made by a few food bloggers which is helpful for the visual element in the folding - I was confused when I first read the instructions. Seeing it helps. Thanks for still more guidance and encouragement!

Colleen, Thanks for the link. Just so everyone gets due credit-- the two women in the video are Chez Tse and Amy Glaze. Thanks all! ~ Shuna

[Samantha]

Hi Shuna! I stopped into Ottolenghi over the weekend and thought of you!
I love puff pastry, and can't wait to watch this step by step demo. Thanks for the link, and keep up the great posts!

[Gail]

Reading this takes me back to my first puff pastry class in culinary school. I actually wept when I saw what the results of lovingly tended flour, water and butter could become. I thought it was more sumptuous than the grandest French velvet I had worked with in my previous career. That's when I really knew I was choosing the right path.
Thank you for the the links, too!