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This is my third post in this baking basics series and will be all about how to make puff pastry!
In this post, I will first give you some basic information about Puff Pastry and tips for success when making it. At the end of the post, you can find a basic recipe that will make about 750g puff pastry.
- #1 How To Make Shortcrust Pastry
- #2 How To Master Chocolate (Melting, Tempering, Decorating)
- #3 How To Make Puff Pastry
- #4 How To Make a Sourdough Starter
- #5 How To Make Buttercream (Normal, Dairy-free, Vegan)
- #6 How To Make Hot Water Crust Pastry
- #7 How To Make Crème Chantilly | Chantilly (Sweetened) Cream
- #8 How To Make Crème Pâtissière | French Pastry Cream
- #9 How To Make Lemon Curd
- #10 How To Make Crème Anglaise (Vanilla Custard)
- #11 The 5 Cake Making Methods – Explained
- #12 How to Make Filo Pastry
- #13 How to Make Royal Icing | Perfect for Biscuit Decorating
- #14 How to Make Honeycomb (Cinder Toffee, Hokey Pokey)
What is Puff Pastry?
Puff pastry; the lightest, flakiest, richest of pastries, but also one of the hardest ones to make yourself! It can be used in both sweet and savoury baking. Some sweet recipes include the French patisserie classics such as Mille Feuille or Danish Pastries. But you can also use your homemade puff pastry to make savoury treats, such as sausage rolls, palmiers or puff pastry pizza.
The possibilities are pretty much endless!
Homemade puff pastry is a tricky one – there is a good reason for it being available to buy from the shops! However, when it works, homemade puff pastry is extremely satisfying to make and it tastes better than shop-bought, too! 😉 Or at least that´s what you can tell yourself to make it seem worth the effort…😅
How can you make your own Puff Pastry?
The key to making puff pastry is to create alternating layers of butter and pastry (laminations). The butter will melt once the pastry is in the oven, creating steam which will cause the pastry layers to separate into thin sheets and “puff up”. These laminations, or layers, are created by repeated folding and chilling of the dough.
The most important thing to create the “puff! in this pastry, is to make sure the butter does not melt in between the layers before baking!’
Therefore, it is best to work in a cool kitchen, crucial to keep your butter as cold as possible and to thoroughly chill the pastry between folds!
If your kitchen is quite warm, I would recommend chilling the pastry in the freezer for about 15 minutes after every single turn to avoid the butter melting!
Some Puff Pastry Recipes
Once your puff pastry is made, it can be used for a huge variety of sweet or savoury bakes! Here are a few ideas to start you off with:
Top Tips for making Puff Pastry
1. Make a double batch.
Making your own puff pastry can be pretty time consuming, with all the chilling and waiting between folds. The good thing, however, you could make a double batch – it´s quite difficult to make small batches in the first place anyway. You can then keep any pastry you don´t need in the fridge for up to 4 days or freeze it. Puff pastry is perfect for freezing! When needed, simply defrost the pastry and it is ready to be rolled out and used!
2. Keep your butter cold at all times!
Make sure the butter stays cold at all times! If the butter melts, the pastry will become heavy and greasy (it will still taste good though 😉)
At no stage when making puff pastry do you want to see the butter coming through the pastry. If you do, it´s an indication of the butter melting – so chill in the fridge/freezer immediately so that it can solidify again!
Depending on how warm your kitchen is, you might have to chill your pastry between every single turn, rather than every second turn (see in the methods section of the basic recipe below).
3. Stick to the chilling times!
As mentioned above, keeping the pastry and butter cold at all times is crucial for successfully making puff pastry.
You should also make sure your pastry is well chilled before using and then work quickly whilst filling or topping the puff pastry with other ingredients. You might even want to chill the filled pastry again before baking, as the aim is that the butter melts in the oven, creating steam that will cause the pastry layers to separate.
4. Prevent your pastry from becoming dry.
In order to prevent the pastry from becoming dry, only lightly dust your worktop and rolling pin with flour so that you can minimise the amount of additional flour being worked into the pastry.
Also, use a pastry brush to brush off any excess flour from the pastry when you are folding it.
5. Tips for reusing offcuts.
Any offcuts/excess pieces of puff pastry can be re-used/rolled out again, but make sure you lay the pastry bits on top of one another rather than scrunching them up! That would destroy the lovely layers you have worked so hard to achieve in the first place!
So simply lay excess pastry pieces over or next to one another before to roll out again.
Basic Puff Pastry Recipe – A Step by Step Picture Guide
This is my basic recipe for Puff Pastry that you can use for a wide range of sweet and savoury baking recipes. This recipe makes about 750g of puff pastry.
Why not make double the quantity whilst you´re at it and freeze the remaining pastry, ready to use when you next need it!
Ingredients (for 750g):
- 300g plain flour
- ½ tsp fine sea salt
- 140ml icy cold water
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 300g cold butter, in 50g and 250g portions
Method:
1 Start by accurately weighing the flour, salt and 50g of the butter into a mixing bowl. Measure out 140ml of icy cold water with a measuring jug and add the lemon juice to it.
2. Using your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour until the mixture until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.
3. Add the water and stir with a knife until roughly combined. Finish mixing with your hands until the mix comes together to form a dough.
Shape into a ball and score a deep cross in the top of it. Then wrap it in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for 15 minutes.
4. In the meantime, sprinkle the remaining 250g of butter with a little flour and place between to pieces of clingfilm and bash with a rolling pin until half of the original thickness. Uncover, fold the butter block over in half, recover and bash again. Repeat this process about 2-3 times, until the butter is pliable but still cold. Beat the butter into a roughly 13×13 cm square. Chill in the fridge until the dough has chilled.
5. Remove the dough from the fridge. Lightly dust the surface with flour and roll the dough out, so that it looks a bit like a star: a thicker, rough square in the middle, and four thinner “flaps” around it.
6. Take the chilled block of butter from the fridge and place on the square in the middle of the rolled-out dough.
7. Fold the flaps over the butter, thereby enclosing the butter in the pastry.
Use the rolling pin to gently press down on the seams to seal in the butter completely.
8. Turn the dough upside down, brush off any excess flour with a pastry brush, and carefully roll out into a rectangle about 54×18 cm.
9. Now the folding process begins: Fold up the bottom third over the middle third and brush off any excess flour. Next, fold the top third over the middle third and press down the open edge with your rolling pin to seal. This is known as one “turn”.
10. Next, complete a second turn. Rotate the dough by 90° so that the open edges are now at the sides. Roll out again and repeat the folding process (i.e. complete the next turn). Wrap in clingfilm and then chill in the freezer for 15 minutes.
If your kitchen is warm and you are afraid your butter might start to soften/melt, wrap the pastry in cling film and chill the puff pastry in the freezer for 15 minutes before completing the next turn.
11. Repeat the process of folding and chilling described above until you have completed 6 turns in total.
12. Chill the puff pastry well before using, or wrap in clingfilm and put it into a freezer bag before freezing.
I hope you find this post on How to Make Puff Pastry helpful! Let me know in the comments below if you have success with it and what recipes you use it for!
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