Puff Pastry

People say bought puff pastry is as good home-made, they are wrong, they are not your friend, try this recipe it’s so delicious!

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  What you need:

  
  

  • 250 g of cold unsalted butter
  • 100 g of bread flour
  • 200 g of regular pain flour
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 120 ml of cold water

  
  

  How to make it:

  
  

  1.     You want to start by making a dough. Sift the both flours together to blend them, crack the egg in the flour and season with the salt. The salt is important it enhances flavour and it enhances gluten network formation. For those interested: the salt shields charges present of the gluten molecules which if unshielded allow the gluten molecules to repel one another like magnets. The shielding   therefore allows gluten molecules to come close to one another and knot together, making a strong network (think of the gluten network being like fishing net which will trap in steam when the butter melts making the pastry rise).

  2.     Add the cold water to the dry ingredients (you could put the water in the fridge for a while to cool it), bring the dough together and start to knead it (or you can use a dough hook like I did, I do think that using the machine is better because the dough stays colder than if you used your hands and it lets you make the pastry a bit quicker). In the machine knead for 5 mins or if you’re doing by hand like a boss ~10 mins, either way the dough should be smooth and elastic. Then roll it up into a ball and fridge it for 20 mins. –If you used the machine the dough should stay a cold from the cold water, so leave it 10 mins­.-

  3.     While the dough is cooling take out your cold butter and bash it out so it’s in a 1 cm thick rectangle. -You should bash it rather than roll it, rolling will result in the butter sticking to the surface.- Cover the butter and put it in the fridge.

  4.     After 20 mins place the dough on a floured surface, using a rolling pin create a rectangle shape 1 cm thick. The size of the rectangle should be 1/3 bigger in length than the bashed out butter. 

  5.     Put the butter on the rolled out dough, and fold over the uncovered 1/3 of the dough over 1/3 of the butter. The butter still visible (the 1/3 of butter poking out of the folded dough) should be cut it off and placed it on top of the folded flap of dough.  Now finally use the bottom flap of dough and cover the top layer of butter. Wrap up the crude pastry and fridge it for 20 mins. If like me you overestimated the width your dough needed to be you can trim it off.

  6.     Take out the dough and place it with the roll pattern (the bit that looks like the side of a Swiss roll) in front of you. Roll out the dough length ways and fold it in 3rds back on itself again (reforming the Swiss roll pattern). Turn the dough 90^o and roll the dough out once again length ways and refold. Repeat this procedure so you perform 3 total refolds. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours before using, 24 hours is the best.  You can freeze it if you want, it keeps pretty well.

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