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Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Puff Pastry


Ingredients: 
110g butter
110g flour
Pinch of salt
3 to 4 drops of vinegar or lime juice
50ml of water(ice water)

Method:
Melt about 30g of butter. Set aside to cool. In a bowl shift flour add salt, vinegar, melted butter and water. Knead to a soft little sticky dough if you have to add little water add. 

Rest of the butter leave to soften and when you feel you can shape it any way spread a piece of food wrapping plastic on the kitchen counter or a table put the soften butter on the food plastic and Sandwich the butter with another piece of plastic wrap. Start flattening the butter into a thin square sheet shaping by your hand or using a spatula. Now the butter will be very soft so gently wrap it with the food wrapping plastic & put it in fridge leave it for 1 hour to harden.

Puff pastry is buttery, flaky, crispy and light. It's made by creating many layers of dough and butter by folding & rolling without letting the butter melt. So folding and handling the dough have to be done very fast. The experts make it without breaking the dough or without letting the butter getting out of dough, but this need a lot of practice. If your dough breaks or if the butter comes out sometimes don't worry. Carry on the Procedure the final product will make you happy. Try to roll the dough same thickness and that the edges be very straight and even this will take some practice too

Place the ball of dough you made on a floured work surface and flatten slightly from sides so the middle of dough have to be little thick. Try to roll it to a big square which can cover the butter......... I did my best and it turn out this ...

Place the square of butter on the center of the rolled dough and fold in the sides, stretching the pastry slightly to seal in the butter. 

Lightly tap the top of the pastry with a rolling pin to seal the edges and to enlarge and flatten the square a little, then roll out the pastry to a long rectangle try to make the edges of the rectangle even and straight.

 Fold the bottom of the rectangle up toward the center, carefully aligning the edges. Brush off any excess flour. 


Fold the top down to make a neat square and brush off any flour.

You will have a neat square of pastry . Quickly put this pastry in fridge for 15minutes. 
Take the dough out place the  pastry upper folded side to your right .

Roll out the pastry into a long rectangle. Again fold into thirds.  Wrap the pastry and refrigerate for 30 minutes.Give the pastry 4 more turns  rolling, folding and refrigerating for 30 minutes. So total folding and turning will be six times. Then wrap and refrigerate it for 10 minutes more before rolling out for shaping and baking.



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