Puff Pastry?!?!
Puff Pastry?!?
I bought these Puff Pastrys from the store a while ago, they are Pepperidge Farm brand. Well, they are kind of expensive, and i need to make alott so I really didn't want to have to buy them, So does anyone have a recipe for them or something close to them? I searched for them but couldn't find anything that sounded close to it. Thanks!
Answers:
I see a couple recipes here that are for pate à choux (cream puff dough), NOT puff pastry. Anything that involves cooking flour with butter and adding eggs or egg whites is cream puff dough, not puff pastry. I also saw someone mention phyllo (or filo) dough which also isn't the same thing and is made by stretching a thin sheet of dough over a large surface (like a table).
Puff pastry is made in along and tedious process I've succeeding in trying a few times. It makes outstanding pastry, but takes half the day to make. Essentially, puff pastry is the result of forming many layers of dough through a process of rolling out a dough made of flour, water, butter, and salt and layering it with a layer of butter (some add a little flour to make it easier to work with). The block is rolled out, folded in thirds, refrigerated, then turned 1/4 turn, rolled out, folded in thirds, etc. a total of 6 turns. Each turn must be chilled for 10-15 minutes in between rolling so the butter doesn't melt.
What makes puff pastry so delicate, light, and flaky is the steam that's produced by the water in the butter. This is why it's essential that the butter in the inner layers does not melt in between turns - if it does, you'll end up with pie crust instead of a lofty pastry.
Unless you have quite a bit of experience handling pastry, I honestly wouldn't bother making it yourself. Even the "pros" often buy mass-produced pastry because it's time consuming to make. There are easier versions called "rough pastry" that aren't as time consuming and instead of all the turns involved, they may have you only do one or two turns total, relying on large-ish chunks of cold butter within the pastry itself to create enough steam to make the pastry rise. While this type of pastry is good enough for some dishes, it won't produce something as nice as what you can even buy in the store. If you have a Trader Joe's near you, www.traderjoes.com, they sometimes carry puff pastry and it's probably cheaper than your regular store.