Pâte feuilletée (puff pastry)

TIME6 hours MAKES1kg (enough for two 25cm open tarts, or 8 meat pies) PORTION
0.5x 1x 2x 3x

Flaky puff pastry is relatively easy to make at home, but does require some practice. For the lamination, make sure that your butter and flour are roughly the same plasticity before the first turn — if the butter is too cold, it will crack and ‘shatter’ when you try and roll it out. If it is too warm, it will melt and incorporate with the dough.

To scale this recipe up and down, simply remember the ratio 2:1:1 — 2 parts flour, 1 part water, 1 part butter block (as well as 2% salt and 10% melted butter for the dough).

INGREDIENTS

  • 500g plain flour
  • 10g salt
  • 50g unsalted butter (melted and cooled)
  • 250ml cold water
  • 250g unsalted butter (cold)

STEPS

  1. Using an electric mixer with the dough hook, mix flour, salt, melted butter, and cold water for about 2-4 minutes until smooth (it may take longer than this, but be careful not to overmix as it will make the dough harder to roll during lamination).

  2. On a piece of baking paper, mark a 15 x 15cm grid. Place the cold butter on the grid, and fold over the baking paper, and pound the butter until you have an homogenous butter block the same size as the grid. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

  3. On a piece of baking paper, mark a 15 x 30cm grid. Place the dough on the grid, fold over the paper, and use the rolling pin to roll the dough out to 15 x 30cm. Leave to rest for 15 minutes in the fridge for the gluten to relax.

  4. Dust your bench with a little flour (try and be frugal!), and place the dough on the counter. Unwrap the butter block, and place it in the middle of the dough. Fold both ends of the dough over the block and pinch the ends together. You should end up with a 16 x 15cm rectangle, with the butter exposed on the left and right ends, and a tightly sealed seam on the top. Using a sharp pairing knife, cut a slit along each folded edge.

  5. Letter fold: Begin rolling the dough from the middle to the top, flouring as needed. Rotate the dough 180 degree and continue to roll middle to top, until you have a rectangle measuring about 20 x 65 cm. Perform a letter fold, and then using a sharp pairing knife, cut a slit along each folded edge.

  6. Rotate the dough 90 degrees, and repeat the above process two more times, for a total of 3 folds. Refrigerate for 3 hours.

  7. Perform two more letter folds, then refrigerate for 2 hours.

  8. Peform a final letter fold for a total of 5 folds1. Refrigerate overnight.

NOTES

  • Puff pastry freezes well, however as flour contains an antioxidant called glutathione that weakens gluten over time, if you plan to freeze puff pastry for an extended period of time, simply disolve tablet(s) of Vitamin C (ascorbic acid — aim for 0.1% of the weight of the flour) in the water used to create the dough. This will also avoid the development of brown spots in the flour.
  1. You can optionally do an additional fold here, for a total of 6 folds. ↩︎

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