Making Your Own Coarse Puff Pastry Is Absolutely Worth It
Although I love baking, I do not consider myself a “serious baker.” Sure, I make a pie crust myself and can bake a pretty decent loaf of bread, but one thing I wanted to fiddle with was puff pastry.
In fact, why do you need this? Puff pastry is difficult to make – it’s all curling, cooling, folding, etc. – and what you can buy at the grocery store is good . But then I got very carried away with The Great British Bake Off (the Mary Berry years) and heard the words “rough puff” all the time.
Vaguely obscene-sounding dough – and doesn’t everything about this show sound disobedient? – should give a dough that looks like puff pastry, but instead of adding giant chunks of butter to the dough, you break the butter. into small pieces, mix it into a dough, then start with all over rolling and folding. To see if this version of the cheaters can replace the sheets of commercial material that I have in my freezer, I decided to give it a try.
First, I needed a recipe, so I reached out to Gordan Ramsay, a man who – although temperamentally the exact opposite of my beloved Miss Berry – knows a thing or two about puff pastry. The Flying Chef’s recipe is very simple; all you need is:
- 250 g strong plain flour
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 250 gbutter
- about 150 ml of cold water
However, since I can’t leave well enough alone, I changed the recipe very slightly by freezing the butter to grate it.
I sifted the flour and salt together, added the chopped butter, then gently mixed everything together until the butter was well coated. Then I processed the dry ingredients a little and slowly added the ice water, 1-2 drops at a time, gently stirring everything with a wooden spoon until a dense but coarse dough was formed.
This ball of dough was then placed in the refrigerator for twenty minutes, after which it was formed into a beautiful rectangle.
I then rolled it out until it tripled – it ended up being about 24 inches – making sure I could still see the bits and streaks of butter. Then I folded one third down towards the center, then another third up and on top of that. I turned the square a quarter turn and repeated rolling and folding.
The dough was sent to the refrigerator overnight – naturally wrapped in plastic wrap – and I went with the boys for a burger and beer (of course).
The next morning, in the cold light of day, I rolled out my butter square again, then cut a piece and baked it with my store-bought cousin in a 400-degree oven. As you can see in the photo above, the store-bought puff pastry (left) came out much, much more fluffy than my rude rider, and I was momentarily alarmed. “It’s simple: making your own puff pastry is still silly,” I sent to my Slack colleague, such was my disappointment.
But then I tried it, and my opinion changed dramatically.
I’ve always known that frozen puff pastry is made using shortening rather than butter, but that never bothered me that much before. However, after trying this oily coarse mixture, I was greatly concerned because the oil really matters a lot. (For reference, I ate an entire square of coarse puff pastry and threw away a store-bought sample.)
To see how this turns into a cookie, I made some Nutella mini palms. Not only did the frozen biscuits turn into a mustache for some reason, but it tasted nowhere near as good as the buttered biscuits. If you are a person who has tasted butter, you will probably say, “Oh yes, Claire,” but I really have to try to believe it.
So, is the rough drag worth it? This is actually the case. It’s very easy to make and its oily flavor will absolutely sing on a pie folded around some apples (for biscuits) or rolled into cheese sticks. While you won’t get the super-high puff layers of real puff pastry, the layers you will actually get taste much better than store-bought foods, and I prefer to impress people’s mouths than their eyes.