Easy Puff Pastry
My recipe for an easy Puff Pastry is so fast to make without all the folding like a traditional pastry, but it yields amazing results. Marthinus Strydom
The Story
Originating in France, they call this as pâte feuilletée or feuilletage. Puff pastry is a light, flaky made by repeatedly layering pastry dough and butter or another solid fat, called laminating, to form a thin dough that puffs in the oven. It is one of the ultimate examples of flakiness, if everything is done right from start to finish, or the results will be disappointing.
Puff Pastry was invented in about 1645 by a French pastrycook's apprentice named Claudius Gele. At the end of his apprenticeship, Claudius wanted to bake a delicious loaf of bread for his sick father, who was prescribed a diet consisting of water, flour and butter. Claudius prepared a dough, packing the butter into it, kneading the dough out on the table, folding it, and repeating the procedure ten times, after which he moulded the dough into a loaf.
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Ingredients
Method
- Place your butter in the freezer for a minimum of 2 hours, but preferably overnight.
- In a jug, mix together your water and lemon juice and set aside.
- In a large bowl mix together the flour and salt. Now I’m going to sound like a home economics book, but you need everything to be cold to yield great pastry, so feel free to put the bowl of flour in the fridge to chill.
- On the larger side of a grater, grate the frozen butter directly into the flour mix. Stir the butter into the flour with a knife. Frozen butter is my secret ingredient. The colder the butter the flakier the pastry.So remember, this is a shortcut short crust pastry, so we aren’t folding and doing that whole process. If you want to do it the old way, then you can fold it in thirds, roll out and place back in the fridge and then an hour later fold it again and roll it out again.
- Add in the liquid, holding a little back just in case you don’t need it all. Using your hand, bring your pastry together gently. You want to add just enough water to bring the pastry together. Too much water will not yield you a flakey dough.
- Bring the dough together to form a ball. Wrap in cling film and place in the fridge for a minimum of 1 hour. You can refrigerate it for up to 3 days or freeze to use at a later day.
- Note: Once you put pastry in the fridge and it relaxes it will get a little wetter so factor that in.
- To use your pastry: Follow instructions required by the recipe you are making. Alway bake in a HOT oven for best results.
