Making puff pastry

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blissful

Master Chef
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Mar 25, 2008
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I'm making puff pastry (again), I've made it before and it's a fun day. It's been years though. I'm going to freeze most of it as it makes over 5 lbs of puff pastry. I'm half way through the refrigerate and fold this way or that directions.

Here's the recipe I'm using: http://www.manusmenu.com/home-made-puff-pastry

I was doing some reading on the puff pastries, pepperridge farms is made with all or some shortening and lard and $5/lb, while dufours is made with butter and is about $12/lb. (from serious eats) I'm making mine with butter.

I have my eye on this recipe that needs puff pastry: Home Cooking In Montana: Michel Richard's "Egg" Pastry...or Apricot Puff Pastry Tart

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Well, that is just cute as heck and a half and my DH loves apricots, so, I must make these! Could you hold yourself back from making or trying one of these? I couldn't.

This puff pastry, is different than what I've made before. In the past I just bashed the butter flat and made it fit the dough, then refrigerate fold, repeat, repeat, repeat. This one has some flour added to the butter part but overall, the recipe is about half butter and half dough. I'm going to end with 3x4x3x4 layers, 144 layers.

I'll let you know how it all turns out, foodies. :LOL:
 
Can't wait to see finished.

Doesn't look like a difficult job but lots of time.
 
wait, you are actually making puff pastry dough? Wow, kudos to you. Certain things I just refuse to make. They are just so much easier to be bought. Puff pastry dough is just too time consuming to me.
 
Mmm. Would love to have a bite of that tart, bliss. And holy buckets, 5 lbs, that's a lot of puff pastry! You busy girl, you!
 
Ha hahahaha...the tart hero, ha ha.
Well, we tested some cheese and bacon on two pieces of puffed pastry, just to see how it does and it was great, flaky like a croissant and puffed nicely. Tomorrow morning, I'll make the apricot things for DH, and yes I'll take pictures even if they don't look perfect. Thanks for the encouragement.
 
It's not that hard to make really. A lot depends on the temperature in the house. The butter needs to stay solid and not melt.

If the recipe says:
Make dough, pound butter, assemble and refrigerate for 1 to 1 and 1/2 hours, well, you have to do that part. Next time I'd make the dough and pound out the butter, and assemble the night before.

If you have to roll it out (and you do this 4 times), fold it, and the refrigerate it each time for 1 to 1 and1/2 hours, it will take a long time. (Refrigeration time alone could be 5-7.5 hours.)

On a hot day 80 degrees F, like today, you have a short time window to roll it out of about 10 to 15 minutes before it softens too much. On a cold day you have to have muscles, big arm muscles because it is like rolling out a rock.

The best house temperature would be around 60-65 degrees where the butter won't melt. You can shorten the refrigeration time if your house is at this temperature.

Some recipes will let you roll it out, fold it, and roll it out and fold it, before you need to refrigerate it again. You could cut out half your time or more by doing it on a cool day, 60-65 degrees F.

The reason I made the big batch was because if I was going to take up the day doing it, I might as well have enough for a few extra treats.
 
We have nonstop thunder and lightning tonight, we are under a tornado watch, so that nesting instinct kicked in and I made the pastry cream. It's cooling. I drained the canned apricots, my goodness those things are little, not more than an inch across. I boiled down the syrup from the apricots with a little sugar, that is cooling. Everything is ready for tomorrow. Though, we are having bad weather, what could happen? Maybe I shouldn't ask what can happen. Thank God for friends and good food.
 
Funny thing, I made strawberry cream puffs today!


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Did you use puff pastry or choux pastry? Either is wonderful, I love them both. There is something about a treat like that, that is a celebration of life. Great job wish I was there.
 
Julia made the puff pastry on her show. What I remember most was that each time she folded it, she would gently make an indentation with her fingers to show herself what fold she was one. All the way up to eight times she folded it. And she added more than a pound of butter to it. She would add butter to each fold.

It looks like a lot of work yet at the same time the hardest part is to keep it cold with the butter. The folding part is easy, if you can remember how many times you have folded it.

How do you cut out circles without crushing the layers?
 
Thanks. Seriously, it is not hard to make. It probably makes sense to make something else while you make the puff pastry because there is a lot of waiting time.

"How do you cut out circles without crushing the layers?"
Just cut the circles out pushing straight down and not twisting. Since the layers aren't puffed until after cooking, you don't crush anything when it is just dough.

When I finished with the slab of dough, I sliced it with a sharp knife into 4 portions. One for the next day and 3 to wrap and put in the freezer. Here you can kind of see the layers in the dough.

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The dough wrapped with the one to use the next day. Each piece was about a lb and a quarter, the one on the right, I'd already took some off to do the taste testing with cheese and bacon.

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Here are the dough oblongs, circles cut out and then rolled a little in the middle, and the top side is pushed into sugar. My pastry cream failed, got runny, so I mixed up some cream cheese with sugar and vanilla instead.

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Out of the oven, glazed in apricot syrup (from the can then with sugar added).

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They really liked them a lot. The best part for me is just the plain buttery scraps. Lots of layers of crispy. Delicious.

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Hurry over they'll be gone in a few minutes.:LOL:
 
Hate making puff pastry and since I heard Jamie Oliver say that even in the very "posh" restaurants they buy it in I don't make it anymore. If it's good enough for the top guys it's good enough for me! (I do buy the good quality butter version though)
 
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