Homemade Puff Pastry

Ever had a classic French palmier? A flaky turnover filled with fruit? A bite of puff pastry filled with cranberry sauce and brie at a cocktail party? All these delicious treats start right here, with this dough. Yes, you can buy puff pastry at the store, but if you’re in the mood for a real baking project, you can make it yourself at home. All you need is a pastry scraper and a French rolling pin, and simple ingredients like flour, water, and butter.

Here’s everything you need to know to make puff pastry from scratch.

Puff pastry is made from hundreds of paper-thin layers of butter trapped between hundreds of paper-thin layers of dough. In the oven, the liquid in both the butter and the dough rapidly evaporates, puffing the individual layers skyward. The butter melts into the dough, turning it golden and crispy.

Getting to this end result takes a little work. First, you make a “lean” dough of just flour and water — it’s considered lean because it contains no fat. Then you wrap this dough around a block of cold butter. Roll it out, fold it up like a letter, roll it out, fold it up, and repeat. At the end of this whole process, you will have created all the paper-thin layers that make puff pastry puff.

Making puff is a pretty low-tech process — no fancy gadgets or even a stand mixer required. However, there are two essential tools you really need and that are tricky to replace: a pastry scraper and a French rolling pin.

• Pastry scraper: Also known as a bench scraper, a pastry scraper is used in all the steps: for scraping the flour back into a pile as you make the dough, for nudging the butter into place as you work it, for lifting and moving the pastry as you roll. A pastry scraper also acts as an extension of your hands and fingers, helping you manipulate the dough without warming it up too much with your hands.
• French rolling pin: A French rolling pin or a tapered rolling pin is also essential for pounding the butter and making it pliable. The kind of rolling pins with handles and a freely spinning roller are both too heavy and too awkward for this step. I’ve seen recipes that beat the butter in a stand mixer until pliable, but personally, I still feel that this warms the butter up too much. You want it to be pliable enough to be rolled like a dough, not so soft that it could be spread.

• All-purpose flour: You’ll need 2 cups of all-purpose flour for the lean dough, 1 tablespoon for the butter block, plus more as needed for flouring the work surface and rolling pin.
• Unsalted butter: Make sure the unsalted butter is cold before you start.
• Ice water: Use ice water to keep the lean dough cold when making it.

The process of making the dough for this pastry may feel a little awkward and unfamiliar to you at first. But of all the parts of this process, you should fret the least about making the dough. The fluffing process is to ensure that the water gets evenly mixed into the flour and that not too much gluten is formed. Here’s how to make it.

1. Form a trough in the flour. Mix the flour with the salt, pile it onto your work surface, then run your fingers down the center to create a trough.
2. Add some water. Add a tablespoon of water, then fluff with your fingers.
3. Use a scooping motion. Keep your fingers loose and use a scooping motion.
4. Repeat. Repeat the process, adding water just one tablespoon at a time, until the dough forms shaggy clumps and holds together when pressed.

And it’s actually pretty fun to do! When else do you get to toss flour in the air? As long as you add water gradually and the dough holds together when you’re done, your puff pastry will be fine.

The butter in puff pastry presents a bit of a challenge: you want it to be cold so it stays solid and doesn’t melt into the dough, but you also need it to be pliable so it can be rolled out without breaking into pieces. This seemingly magic act is accomplished by pounding the butter with a French rolling pin.

1. Cut the cold butter into pieces. Then begin pounding it with the end of the rolling pin. (This is very good for anger management, by the way.)
2. Scrape the flattened butter up with a pastry scraper. Then fold it over on itself, and continue pounding and scraping until the butter will bend without breaking, but is still quite cold.
3. Sprinkle the butter with a few teaspoons of flour during this process. Some of the liquid in the butter will bead up on the surface as you pound and the flour helps absorb this. Also, rub flour on your rolling pin as needed to prevent it from sticking to the butter.

Most of the labor of making puff pastry is in that process of rolling out the dough, folding it up, and rolling it out again. This process is called laminating dough. One round of rolling out and folding up is called a “turn” and you do six of them in total to make puff pastry. Here are a couple tips when laminating dough.

• Refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes every two turns: To make sure the butter stays cool, refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes every two turns — or between every turn if your kitchen is very warm.
• If some butter starts to pop through the lean dough as you roll: Just sprinkle the spot with a little flour, pat it with your fingers, and carry on. If this is happening a lot, that’s a sign that the butter is warming up too much and you should refrigerate more frequently.

Oh, the things you can do with puff pastry! You can make big tarts for a crowd or tiny tarts for a dinner party. Make hand pies for breakfast or use it as a topping for pot pies. The recipe below makes about the same amount as one sheet of store-bought puff pastry, so you can use it in any recipe that calls for it. Here are some of our favorite recipes that use puff pastry.

• Puff Pastry Cheese Straws
• Baked Brie in Puff Pastry
• Mini Beef Wellingtons
• Puff Pastry Cinnamon Rolls
• Spinach and Feta Bourekas
• Puff Pastry Glazed Doughnuts
• Caramelized Onion, Apple & Cheddar Tart
• Everything Bagel Puff Pastry Cheese Straws
• Caramelized Leek, Spinach, and Goat Cheese Tart