Puff pastry starts off looking like plain old pie dough, but then somehow, magically, it transforms into crispy clouds of pastry in the oven. But there's no yeast, baking soda, or baking powder in puff pastry, so what makes it ascend to these heights of puffy glory?
The secret is steam and hundreds of paper-thin layers of dough. Puff pastry starts out as a lean dough of just water and flour. This dough gets rolled, stretched, and folded with a healthy amount of butter again and again until all of those layers are formed. The finished pastry dough looks uniform, but it's actually very thin layers of dough separated by equally thin layers of butter.
In the oven, the water in the layers of dough (and some water in the butter) turns into steam. This steam has just enough force to puff up each thin sheet of dough before evaporating into the oven. What's left behind is a delicate shell of airy pastry. Yum.
By the way, you can also prick the puff pastry all over with a fork before baking. This allows the steam to vent in the oven before puffing the layers, so you end up with compressed, shatteringly crisp sheets instead. This is great for Napoleons and rustic tarts, and is also very yum.
Have you ever made your own puff pastry? We're determined to try it for ourselves this month!
Related: Melt in Your Mouth: Five Little Nibbles with Puff Pastry
(Image: Emma Christensen)
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Making puff pastry is on my to do list. One day I will get around to it! Please post results if you can, I would love to see how it turns out.
What's the difference between puff pastry and pate a choux? I know how to make the latter but not the former...
@KPickett - check out this tutorial on pate a choux:
Introduction to Pate a Choux
Essentially, puff pastry is made of hundreds of thin layers of rolled-out dough and butter, where pate a choux is a thick batter of flour, butter, and eggs (which gets piped rather than rolled). They both depend on steam for rising/puffing, though!
Thanks Emma!
Great to know!
WHAT is that recipe in the picture? looks delicious...
don't really care how it's made, I just know it's YUMMY! :o)
Good to know! I recently started discovering all the things you can make with puff pastry. Just this past weekend I made savory palmiers. Mmmmm!!
Oooh! Palmiers are one of my favorites and you can make amazing savory ones with cheese and spinach!
@libbysal - The photo is from my culinary school days. It's either an oyster or escargot in some sort of highly buttery sauce, if I remember correctly. :)
so, puff pastry is never vegan? that can't be true.
@mattiemay - you can get vegan puff pastry!! I have some in my freezer at home right now. Its just as good as the regular ol' stuff.
I'm in Australia - so I don't know where you'd be able to find some. . .
Most commercial puff pastry can be vegan.
Lots of the time it is made with a "lamination fat" which is a modified vegetable based fat.
Everyone should be able to enjoy puff pastry!(But it is much tastier with butter)
Oh and I meant to say, Making puff paste is easy, you just have to make sure that:
1: every time you fold your dough you turn it 90o before you make your next turn
2: you wait at least 20 minutes after each turn
3: your fat is the same consistency as the dough(This can be achieved by keeping the dough and the fat as cold as possible without freezing.
Gorgeous Vol Au Vents in that picture. Must have been a really talented photographer.