The Great Puff Pastry Experiment

Allow me to introduce my new project...french baking!  After reflecting upon my various weaknesses and interests, I decided that I needed to improve my baking skills.  I picked out the great volume The Art of French Baking by Ginette Mathiot.  Unlike my other blog, this time I will be following the book in order, starting with the very first recipe and working my way through the chapters as they come.

 

The first couple of posts will be a little boring, as the book has you learn "the basics" that will be used REPEATEDLY throughout the book.  I will be starting with simple pastry recipes, moving on to sauces, frostings, and fillings,  all before really getting underway with small cakes.

The first two recipes, both on page 31, are for puff pastry.  The first is simply called Puff Pastry Dough, and the second is called Rough Puff Pastry Dough.  Never before have I made puff pastry dough (used it a couple of times, but never made it) and I figured that it would be a good opportunity to try a couple of things: First, I wanted to determine the advantages and disadvantages of both, and second, I wanted to compare them to store-bought puff pastry.  

Both recipes used the same ingredients:

Here is their competition:

I learned a while ago that everyone tends to measure ingredients a little differently, so there needed to be some standardization.  Instead of measuring by volume, when baking the ingredients should be measured by mass.  I've already added a few notes to this book's inside cover.

I like to use my kitchen's small chalkboard for my calculations.

A nice digital scale is necessary for these precise measurements.

I began with the first recipe, the Puff Pastry Dough.  The recipe calls for the flour to be sifted, which I would have done anyway as the flour was rather clumpy.

The recipe also called for 1/2 cup of ice-cold water, so I iced some water and right before adding it in I poured just the water (no ice) in the measuring cup and dumped it into the flour.

After mixing the flour, salt, and water, you have to form the dough into a square that is 3/4 inch thick.  Yes, I'm a dork and confirmed this with measuring tape.

This turned out to be a rather small square...here is a small spoon to give you an idea of just how small this was.  It seemed odd to me, but hey, I'm here to learn!

The butter is then supposed to be cut into small pieces and then piled on top of the dough square.  As I had such a small square, I quickly ran out of room. 

The directions state that you have to fold in the four corners over the butter, not allowing any of the butter to escape.   This was hard because there was so much butter to cover with such little dough.  I'm no so sure about this 3/4 inch thing.

Still, I managed to pull it off, and this went into the fridge for 10 minutes for firming.

You then roll this out to 1/4 inch thick (yes, I measured again), still not allowing any butter to escape.

Fold in half...

...and roll out again.

Then begin folding this into thirds, like a business letter.

This goes into the fridge for 15 minutes for more firming.  The key is to not letter the butter get too warm.

And that is pretty much it...oh...except that you have to do this SIX MORE TIMES!  Roll it out, fold it up, chill for 15 minutes, repeat.  Each time you do this, it is called a "turn."

After two turns, I started the Rough Pastry Dough, as it only needed 4 turns.  I liked this method a little better, as you mix everything in a stand mixer, saving yourself a little labor.

Once it forms a ball, stop the stand mixer.  Overmixing the flour can release too much gluten, making the dough too chewy.

This gets covered in plastic wrap and gets relegated to the fridge for firming.

Here they are, having gone through all of their turns.

It's experiment time!  I cut some pieces from each of the doughs, and set them on parchment paper to go into the oven at 350 degrees.  From left to right, I have the Puff Pasty Dough, the Rough Puff Pastry Dough, and the store-bought stuff.  All got a simple egg wash before going into the oven.

This is what they looked like at the 10-minute mark.

 After twenty minutes, I pulled them from the oven for some data collection.  As you can see, the best riser and browner was the store bought stuff.

Now let's check the insides...first I examined the Puff Pastry Dough.  The insides were completely underdone, but there was some semblance of layers being formed, which was good.

The Rough Puff Pastry Dough had risen less, and also achieved less browning.  It was also the most undercooked.

The store-bought stuff had the best layers, browning, and interior cooking.  It was still undercooked in the middle, but was the best of the bunch.

It was time to check the results at a different temperature.  I set the oven to 425, and made 6 rectangles of dough, using two from each batch.  Here is the first group (same order as before) after 15 minutes.  What was interesting was that the store-bought stuff once again rose the best, but was also the worst at retaining its shape.  It pulled into some sort of ball shape.

The insides were still, however, rather underdone.

Five minutes later, I pulled the second round batch.  Overall, they looked much better.

Disappointingly, the insides were still a little underdone,  but overall had the best results of this experiment.

So here are my findings:

(1) 425 works much better than 350

(2) The Rough Puff Pastry was the worst of the bunch, as it had the least lift and worst browning.  It did have the advantages of being easy to work with, but I don't foresee it working well down the road.

(3) The Puff Pastry was a fun thing to do.  The results weren't ideal, but I think that it warrants another try.  I'll have to do some more research on the matter, but at least now I can say I know how it is done.  The book does say that 6 turns are the minimum, and that more turns will results in more layers.  Perhaps sometime later I'll give this another shot and double the amount of turns or something.

(4) The store-bought stuff, while the least economical, does work the best.  It rises better, flakes better, and browns the best.  Until I get better at the homemade version, this will be the way to go.  The major advantage it has is that it takes far less time to prepare, so while it may be expensive, you have to ask yourself, "How much is my time worth?"

This was long, and probably somewhat boring, but it was a necessity.  I have four more pastry basics to cover, and then it's on to the Frostings and Fillings!