A Shortcut To Flaky Puff Pastry

By Author: Susan Miltenberger
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When I was learning to cook, I thought of mastering puff pastry as a rite of passage from the merely eager to the expert. Making this delicate, flaky pastry usually takes at least half a day, but the result—hundreds of puffed, crisp, and buttery layers—was, in my mind, the ultimate kitchen achievement. Then I discovered that most chefs use a shortcut method known as rough puff pastry (also called blitz and half pastry) that takes only a fraction of the time. Though the results are not quite as spectacular in terms of height, rough puff pastry is just as irresistibly flaky, buttery, and tender as traditional puff pastry. Use rough puff pastry to make turnovers, mille-feuilles, cheese straws, and cream horns, or use it as a crust for tarts, quiches, and pot pies. Classic puff pastry begins with basic dough called a détrempe (pronounced day-trahmp) that is rolled out and wrapped around a slab of butter. The dough is then repeatedly rolled, folded, and turned. The goal is to distribute the butter evenly in sheets throughout the dough. When the pastry bakes, the moisture in the butter creates steam, causing the dough to puff ...
... and separate into many layers.
Making classic puff pastry takes a lot of time because the dough needs lengthy rests after the initial détrempe stage and between its many "turns" (each series of rolling, folding, and turning).There are a few ways to abbreviate the process of making puff pastry, all with the goal of distributing bits of butter throughout the dough. The method I find most streamlined is a cross between classic puff pastry and basic pie crust. You cut the butter into the flour as if making pie crust, but instead of simply rolling out the crust, you give the dough a quick series of turns and folds as you would for puff pastry. When teaching how to make rough puff pastry, I've found that the only tricky part is getting my students to believe that the crumbly pile of butter, flour, and scant water will actually become a smooth, workable dough. The temptation is to add more water to bind the dough, but excess water would only make the dough tough. In my Rough Puff Pastry recipe, I use the same weight of butter as of flour, and about half that weight of water. So for 12 ounces each of flour and butter (about 2-1/2 cups flour and 24 tablespoons butter -- the volume by weight of flour and butter are not equal), use 6 ounces of water (3/4 cup -- the weight and volume of water are the same). Add the water a little at a time since you may need less.
As you can see from the step-by-step photos below, the first few times you try to fold the dough, it will crumble. Don't worry: around the fourth turn, the dough will become smooth and solid. Once this happens, I give the dough one more turn and then fold it into a book fold to give it even more layers. The dough then needs to rest, but for only half an hour -- enough time to work on the filling. The dough then gets two more turns. At this point you can go ahead and use it, but another rest will make it even easier to roll and shape. You can refrigerate the dough for up to two days or freeze it for up to a month.

Classic puff pastry takes half a day to make, but this shortcut version, called rough puff pastry, is ready to use in an hour or less.