Rough Puff Pastry
Classic Puff Pastry is created using laminated dough: Layer upon super thin layer of butter, sandwiched between super thin layers of buttery dough. It’s what creates those flakey, buttery pastries like Palmiers, Danish, Apple Turnovers, and Napoleons. Although the reward is great, creating laminated dough is a labor of love and requires a lot of time and practice to get right.
Rough Puff Pastry (also known as Blitz Puff Pastry or Quick Puff Pastry) is a simpler way to create puff pastry in significantly less time with all of the same buttery deliciousness. There are countless Rough Puff Pastry or “Easy” puff pastry recipes out there, but I found a lot of them confusing and lacking helpful visuals, so I put this recipe together. I’ll continue to add more visuals as I make more pastries.
Freeze your cubed butter for 30 minutes before beginning.
Rough Puff Pastry Recipe:
Yield:
2 lbs rough puff pastry dough
Difficulty:
Moderate
Time:
20 minutes
Special equipment:
Rolling pin
Ingredients:
380 grams all purpose flour
1 TBSP kosher salt or 2 tsp table salt
380 grams (almost 3 sticks) cold, unsalted butter, cubed (freeze for 30 minutes before you start)
⅔ cup very cold water (put it in the freezer while you gather your other ingredients)
Two quick tips before we begin:
This dough works because there are large pieces of butter throughout the dough. If at any point you start seeing melted butter on the surface of the rolled out dough, lightly sprinkle flour on the buttery area. Wipe off any excess flour, cover with plastic wrap and freeze for 15-20 minutes.
Work in a cool area. Hot, humid homes are the enemy of Puff Pastry.
Instructions:
Whisk together flour and salt and place in food processor.
Add cold butter to the food processor and pulse until butter is dime sized. Be careful not to overprocess,
With processor running add the freezer water until a crumbly (but not dry) looking dough forms. See photo.
Your dough should be crumbly but not dry when you turn it out of the processor.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Quickly gather together with your hands and pat into a rough rectangle. If dough won’t come together, lightly spritz with very cold water. Wrap rectangle tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 45 minutes.
Rough dough square before refrigerating.
Unwrap chilled dough and place on lightly floured surface. With a lightly floured rolling pin, roll out dough into 10 x 20 inch rectangle of even thickness.
Rolled out dough. See all those pieces of butter throughout? That’s what’s going to make our pastries puff up.
Fold the short side of the dough one third of the way in toward the center of the dough. Fold the other third over top making sure your edges are flush. Like you're folding a letter. This is how you start to create layers.
If the dough is still cool, continue to the next step. If it looks like the butter is starting to melt or seep into the dough, wrap tightly in it plastic and freeze for 15 to 20 minutes.
Roll out the dough again into another 10 x 20 inch rectangle. (The long side of the folded letter will become 20 inches. The shorter side 10.)
Fold the dough so that the shorter ends almost meet in the center, then fold in half like a book with flush edges. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for a least 30 minutes.
One half of book folded in.
The other half of the book folded in toward the center. That gap is purposeful, so that when I fold it in half there’s room for the thickness of the dough and my folded edges can be flush.
You’re now ready to use your Puff Pastry. You can use it when the 30 minutes are up or cut it in half, wrap tightly and freeze up to 3 months.
Try it in this recipe for Berry Palmiers (Uses ½ recipe Rough Puff Pastry)
