Puff pastry

Puff pastry

Mille feuille, Saint Honoré, chaussons aux pommes, palmiers: they all need a puff pastry to make us happy 'gourmands'!

This dough is composed by two components: the so called 'détempre': wheat flour, salt, water and a little bit of butter. The second phase is the butter that can be pure or 'manié' (butter + flour). 

This method is called 'inverted' (inversée) as oppose to the traditionalwith the "beurre manié" is a faster and easier way to make a puff pastry. 

Phase 1 (détempre)

Ingredients:

375 g of wheat flour

12 g of salt

200 g of water

50 g of butter

Instructions: 

1. Sift the flour, add the salt and leave it in the fridge with the water 

2. Melt the butter in the microwave (just melt, avoid warming it up too much)

3. Mix 35 cl of the water with the butter

4. Put the liquid in the mixer bowl, then add the flour (with the salt), mix it slowly using the dough blade. 

5. When the dough is homogeneous, put it in a plastic film and roll the dough out to get a rectangle

Phase 2 (beurre manié)

325 g of butter

125 g of wheat flour

Instructions:

Cut the butter into small pieces, add the flour and mix it with the dough blade.

Roll it out as the détempre in a separate plastic film.

Put both doughs into the fridge and let them get cold and hard.

Le tourage (folding 4 times - 2 single 'tours' and 2 double 'tours). 

Check out the video demoing the entire process:

tips: 

- there are several kinds of flour that vary accordingly to the percentage of gluten. It's better to keep a T55 kind for puff pastry. 

- the salt is not about the flavor but about the texture. Without it the dough will be unstructured and too soft