Pastry Foundations · Dessert
Rough Puff Pastry in Four Turns
- Intermediate
- 35 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, acid holding everything up to the light.
Ingredients
- 250 g plain flour, 100 percent
- 250 g cold unsalted butter in 2 cm cubes, 100 percent
- 125 g iced water, 50 percent
- 5 g fine salt, 2 percent
- 5 g lemon juice
The skills inside
Chilling to firm: the fridge as binder
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Toss the butter cubes through the flour and salt, pressing each cube flat once between finger and thumb, and stop while the pieces are still the size of a thumbnail.
- Add the iced water and lemon juice and bring it together with a scraper into a shaggy marbled block that looks dry in patches; it should not look like a dough.
- Roll to a rectangle three times as long as it is wide, fold in three like a letter, turn 90 degrees, repeat once, then rest at 4C (39F) for 30 minutes. 30 min
- Give it two more letter folds the same way and rest again; each fold trebles the count, so four folds leave 81 sheets of butter.
- Check the dough sits at 12 to 15C (54 to 59F) before every roll, and if butter starts smearing through the surface, chill 20 minutes before going on. 20 min
- Rest the shaped pastry 30 minutes cold, then bake at 200C (390F) until the layers are set and a cut edge shows open leaves rather than a seam. 30 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Chilling to firm: the fridge as binder 48 recipes
- It went cold before it was handled any further, and it went in spread flat and covered rather than as a warm mass that insulates its own centre.
- It is cold through rather than cold at the edge: tested at the middle it is as firm as it is at the rim.
- It holds its shape unsupported; it can be cut, portioned, rolled or lifted without slumping, tearing, or sticking to the hands.
- The fat in it has gone solid: it feels firm and waxy to the fingers rather than greasy and yielding.
- It survives the step it was chilled for, going into heat or a coating or a mould still holding its form rather than collapsing the moment it is touched.
Where it goes wrong It was given twenty minutes instead of the hours it needed, so it is firm at the rim and soft at the core: it slumps out of shape as it is portioned, and everything made from it spreads or breaks apart in the pan.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Moscato d’Asti
- Also Right
- Late-harvest Riesling
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling elderflower
Citrus desserts need a wine sweeter than they are, with acid enough to keep up: light, frothy, and low-proof wins.
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