Puff pastry
Puff pastry is a type of pastry made from flour and lots of butter. A characteristic feature of this pastry is its structure, consisting of several layers. The pastry is perfect for both sweet and savoury baking.
I admit that for a long time I used only shop-bought puff pastry. That was by no means due to the difficulty of making puff pastry at home, on the contrary, it is very easy to prepare it. The main reason I chose to go that way was time. Unfortunately, making puff pastry at home is quite time consuming.
That changed a while ago and I will tell you why. I am lactose intolerant, and every time I ate baked goods made on a shop bought pastry, I had to take a lactase tablet. So I came to the conclusion that I prefer spending a little time and make a large batch of pastry, freeze it and have it in lactose-free form. Hence, I have been making homemade puff pastry for some time now. Happy baking 🙂
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Ingredients for puff pastry.
- 300 g all-purpose flour + a little for dusting the pastry
- 300 g cold, unsalted butter (I used lactose-free one)
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
- 130 g cold water
How to make puff pastry.
Put the flour, salt and a half of the cold diced butter into a bowl. Knead until the ingredients begin to come together. I prepared the pastry in a food processor. When the ingredients are reasonably homogeneous, add cold water in small batches, kneading all the time.
Place the finished pastry on a pastry board lightly dusted with flour and roll it out to a thickness of about 1.5 centimetre. Cover it with the remaining cold butter, grated on a large-mesh grater, leaving a margin of about 3 centimetres uncovered. Next, grab the pastry by the opposite corners and fold them towards the center so that an envelope-like shape is formed. Carefully roll out the pastry to a thickness of about 2 centimetres then fold it like a letter so it would end up with three layers. Put the pastry in the fridge for 30 minutes.
After removing it from the fridge, roll it out again to a thickness of 2 centimetres, fold it into three and put it in the fridge for another 30 minutes. Repeat this step a total of four times. Keep the pastry up to several days in the fridge or freeze it.
Good to know when making puff pastry.
I rolled the pastry four times in total. I would not recommend rolling it more than five times because the butter will incorporate too much with the flour and this is what you don’t want. It is important to chill the pastry for 30 minutes each time after rolling it out and folding it.
You can prepare both sweet and savoury pastries from it. The baking temperature for the pastry should be 200 degrees Celsius.
Are you looking for recipes involving puff pastry? If so, try our recipe for Cherry roulade.
