Friday 18 October 2013

Homemade puff pastry

Pastry really easy to make, you need the same amount of flour as fat and a pinch of salt. The key is don't handle it too much.

This is rough puff pastry, like the type you get on those tinned pies, The idea is that you use really cold everything and don't touch it too much, you leave lumps of butter and because it's cold when you cook it, it causes steam which means your pastry as little pockets of air causing all the layers.

You will need

Flour, you should use plain I didn't have any so it's abit of a fingers crossed hope it works ok situation. I ussed 250g
butter/lard. You can use half and half for this, I just used butter, I get this one on offer in lidl and stock up but you can use value lard and marge. Make sure it's freezing whatever you use.
salt

Measure out your flour, add it to the blender, with a teaspoon of salt, cut your butter into cubes (while not handling it)




Add to the blender

At this point I hadn't touched my butter at all. Thats a jar of oil in the backround by the way and I'll be using it to show you how to make homemade onion rings next week) 

And now you discover your blenders broken, so you tip it all into a bowl instead. Nope is that only me? well if so you pulse it 3-5 times to break the butter up slightly, leave quite big chunks, then you pulse again while slowly adding water. IF like me that didn't work or you don't own a blender rub the butter in with your fingers, do it quickly and roughly remember you need to handle it as little as possible.

This is mine when it's finished as you can see still lots of big chunks of butter.

Now get a cup of really cold water, and a spoon. I used a full tea cup of water and it was probably slightly too much. 

Slowly add your water and fold it in with your spoon, when your pastry starts clumping together like this

Turn it out onto a floured work surface. and form into a square, do this quickly and touch it as little as possible.


As you can see still big chunks of butter. Roll your dough into a rectangle and flatten the edges.


Fold the top 1/3 of the way down 


Then bring the bottom up over to the top.


Put it in the fridge for atleast 30mins, then repeat. you do this 3 times. The picture above in my final one and as you can see there is still little lumps of butter.

Come back tomorrow to see what i made with it.

Oh and don't panic my blender just needed a new fuse.

2 comments:

  1. This looks like such an easy recipe! I don't have a lot of counter space so will not be working on anything like this anytime soon. But one day...

    Pru

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is, You really don't need much bench space. I do know a different method that uses less bench space I'll do and post for you next time I made pie.

      Delete