Puff pastry – Pâte feuilletée

Butter, butter, butter! Puff pastry is basically flour, water, and (lots of) butter. It is nevertheless one of the greatest products you can find in a bakeshop.

It is very versatile and can be used in many different shapes and with many fillings, both sweet and savoury. The high quantity of fat and the particular way of making puff pastry result in many thin layers in the finished dough: this explains the French name “Mille-feuille” (i.e. “a thousand leaves”), used for the world-wide famous cake made of pâte feuilletée and pastry cream.

The theory

So what is puff pastry exactly?

Puff pastry is made up of a détrempe (a dough made with flour, cool water, salt, and a bit of soft butter) and a block of butter incorporated in it. The détrempe is folded like a letter to lock the block of butter in. Repeating the folding for 5-6 times after rolling out the dough each time creates many layers of dough and butter.
When in the oven, the butter starts to boil: the steam lifts the successive layers higher and higher. Moreover, the heat cooks the flour in the détrempe, which becomes harder since the water evaporates. The final result is flaky (thanks to the butter), with many visible layers: if the dough is properly prepared, puff pastry should rise up to 6-8 times its initial volume.

To prepare puff pastry from scratch, you don’t need any yeast nor baking powder! I would just suggest a fresh room: when I first tried the recipe in summer, the butter was constantly melting as a result of my (not so fast) rolling. When butter is too hot to be worked, it escapes from the détrempe, destroying all the layers in the dough (and making a mess in the kitchen).

Puff pastry – Pâte feuilletée

Print recipe

Prep time

2 hours

Ingredients

Tournage (Folding)

250g	Unsalted butter (cold)

Détrempe

75g	Unsalted butter (very soft)
300g	Bread flour (chilled)
315g	All-purpose flour (chilled)
315ml	Water (cold)
8g	Salt

Directions

Détrempe

Dissolve the salt in the water and add it to the chilled flours and soft butter in a bowl

Mix at slow speed for 1-2 minuts or by hand until a dough forms. It must not be completely smooth: too much gluten would make the puff pastry less flaky.
Engrave a cross on the dough with a sharp knife: this will make the dough less elastic (and you'll be thankful when you have to roll it out). Wrap in plastic and chill for at least 1 hour, or better overnight.

To prepare the butter, wrap it between two layers of parchment paper

Unleash all your violence by smashing the butter with the rolling pin and make it of a rectangular shape, about 1-2 cm tall

On a lightly floured board, roll the détrempe by stretching first the four "corners" resulting from the X cut performed before. The final shape should look like a "plus" sign, but make sure that the center is thicker than the "wings". Lift the dough and rotate as necessary to prevent sticking.

Now that the dough is rolled out, make sure that the détrempe and butter are of similar consistency and height. Brush away any excess flour from the dough's surface and place the butter in the middle of the détrempe.

Tournage (Folding)

Lock the butter in the dough by folding the "wings" one by one (in the order: left, right, top, bottom) and make sure there are no "holes" from which the butter could escape.

Start rolling the dough out: press it gently with the rolling pin several times all across the surface, then slowly expand the ridges by rolling slowly back and forth. Work always "in front of you", with the rolling pin parallel to your body: it is very important that the puff pastry be rolled only in one sense at a time.

Finish rolling by extending the dough vertically, so that it reaches the triple of its original size. Make sure that it keeps a rectangular shape. If you have problems in keeping straight sides in the dough, try adjusting it and pulling it with your hands (you can do it, it's not cheating!)

Remove any excess flour again and fold the dough like a business letter, starting from the top side...

...and then the bottom one. Congratulations: you've just completed the first turn!

Rotate the block 90° clockwise, so that now the dough faces you like a book

With the rolling pin, carefully close the top and bottom side to avoid any butter "leaks". Repeat now steps 8-12 (second turn), wrap the dough in plastic and chill for at least one hour.

Repeat steps 8-12 twice, in order to complete the third and fourth turn. Wrap again the dough in plastic and chill for one hour.

Repeat steps 8-11 once or twice (depending on what your recipe calls for), in order to complete the fifth and (optionally) sixth turn. Wrap again the dough in plastic and chill for half an hour.

The puff pastry is now ready and to use it in your recipe, you just need to roll it out, and this time you can do it in all directions, rotating the dough as necessary.

Note

Since making puff pastry takes some time, don't hesitate to scale the recipe so to have more puff pastry with the same effort. In my recipe I used "only" 250g of butter to avoid wasting too many ingredients in case of failure.
Raw puff pastry can be frozen for several months or stored for 4-5 days in the fridge
Make sure you always remove excess flour before folding the dough: you will avoid gray streaks in the puff pastry and uneven rise
When you roll out the dough, be sure to do it quickly (otherwise the butter will start melting) and not too strongly (you might destroy the layers you've created so far)
In the folding phase, it is of vital importance that you roll out the dough vertically and that you keep the rolling pin always parallel to your body, otherwise the layers will not form properly. You also need to keep the dough in the shape of a rectangle: in case this doesn't come out naturally, you can easily adjust the dough by rolling it out more just on a side or by pulling it with your fingers.
Of course, don't even think of accelerating the process by skipping the dough's rest times in the fridge: you will end up with an elastic dough which is hard to roll out and in which the layers are not well set