Do shops know food better or should we make our own? Let’s make this puff pastry to see if buying or making is worth our time!

While some of us who aren’t well versed in the art of cooking can be waylaid in the maze of grocery isles, those who are initiated into the secrets of food preparation can see through the colorful packaging of the food industry.

Why buy ready-made food?

If someone hasn’t sucked ancient family recipes with the breast milk or been cradled on the kitchen counter, picking up cooking skills can come as quite a burden. No wonder many of us fall into the habit of picking up ready made sauces, meals or desserts.

Many of these things are so ridiculously easy to make that doesn’t take longer preparing them fresh than the thing what we get in the box from the shops. With a little planning ahead, meals and sauces can be prepared in advance without additional preservatives or flavor enhancer and finished up for the dinner table just as quickly as ready made varieties.

It seems that some of us are suckers for desserts though. Desserts that are fast and easy to make were always the hallmark of many kitchens. After all not many of us are willing to spend half a day crafting cakes only to be destroyed by the same hungry mouths that are happy with mug cakes made of perfect size mug cake mix or mess free ready-made crepes from the shelves too.

Is puff pastry hard to make?

Puff pastry is one on the short list of prepared food that isn’t as easy and quick to make in the coziness of our kitchen as most of the ready-made food we are generally offered in the shops.

It’s not that puff pastry is hard to fold or it requires skills beyond the reach of the mortal cook because all we have to do is to fold the pastry several times. Unfortunately, those folds aren’t doing themselves though.

Puff pasty requires time to prepare and while that is fine if we are at home and all we do is binge watch some culturally significant series a third time or run a Star Wars Marathon, on a Tuesday afternoon few of us will be keen to jump on such tasks.

Should we just buy puff pastry then?

Probably the worst thing of all that making puff pasty takes unreasonably long time comparing to the time we spend devouring any amount we are able to prepare. Puff pastry is just so delicious that few of us are able to resist to its call once steaming out of the oven.

Although it seems much better use of our time if we just simply stock up on puff pastry from our favorite grocery store and don’t care about making it, don’t get so hasty about it.

Why make puff pastry?

Many cooking skills are like survival skills in the wilderness. We may not need them in the day to day running of our life but knowing them may one day save our life or in this case our dinner. Luckily, we can freeze puff pastry or simply use them from the fridge fairly long past the expiry date.

Getting ready for the unexpected gives us the edge needed for survival in unforeseen situations and peace of mind, even if people go berserk an buy up all the pastry stuff, leaving us only empty shelves in the shops. Not to mention the crises when we prepare meat pies in a square pan or trying to roll up sausages nicely but all we have is a round puff pastry.

Ingredients

Beginner

4 cups / 500g
3 teaspoons / 15g Salt
1/2 cup / 125ml Water
8oz / 250g Butter (cold)

Advanced

4 cups / 500g
3 teaspoons / 15g Salt
1 cup / 250ml Water
8oz / 250g Butter (cold)

Overkill

4 cups / 500g
3 teaspoons / 15g Salt
1 cup / 250ml Water
1 teaspoon / 5g Fresh yeast
8oz / 250g Butter (cold)

How to make Puff pastry

Beginner – Fortune pastry

Measure flour, salt, butter water into a kneading bowl or kneading surface.
Knead them together by hand or with a kneading machine. We are after a crumbly rough texture so don’t go watching Netflix, it’s just a minute or less.
Form a ball.
Roll it out to a square, wrap it up and put it into the fridge for half an hour until the butter chills back.
Take it out of the fridge, roll it out to desired size and use it as desired. Keep in mind that the butter shouldn’t be incorporated with the flour. If no pieces of butter are visible in the dough, it means we overdid the kneading and this puff pastry most likely never do anything flaky. It will be nice as a shortbread cookie though.

Enjoy!

Advanced – Traditional Puff pastry

Measure flour, water, salt and knead it until a uniform texture dough forms.
Roll the dough out to a square. Size doesn’t really matter but in this case it is about a 7″ / 18cm dough.
On a parchment paper measure out the slab of butter we are about to fill into our dough. We need about half the size of the rolled out dough which in this case 4″ / 10cm.
Wrap it up tightly then with a rolling pin roll the separate slabs into one. Mind to keep the parchment paper in shape. It’s a bit tricky but doable.
Place the butter onto the dough, rotated by a quarter turn.
Wrap the butter by folding the opposite corners of the dough on each other. (If the butter sticks to the parchment paper because it warmed up, wrap it back and put it into the fridge to chill for 15 – 30 minutes.)
Flip the dough, flour both sides and roll it out to a 12″x 6″ / 30cm x 15cm rectangle. The butter may need a bit of gentle whacking and nudging but it will get there.
Fold the top side of the dough down to the middle then fold the bottom side of the dough up to the middle. The two sides should meet at the middle now.
Fold the dough onto itself at the middle where the two edges meet. It’s a pretty arduous technique but French do it this way, so This, is the way.
Wrap the dough into something that prevents it to dry out and put it into the fridge for half an hour to cool off.
Roll the dough again into a 12″x 6″ / 30cm x 15cm rectangle. Luckily, one of the sides are already done so we only have to work on matching it with the other.
Now comes the second folding technique the single fold. Mark the dough into 3 parts then fold 2/3 of the dough to the 1/3 mark.
Fold 1/3 of the dough over the two third. It sounds more difficult than it looks.
Wrap the dough up and let it cool off in the fridge another 30 minutes.
Roll the dough out and use it as desired.

Enjoy!

Overkill – Croissant

Measure flour, water, salt, yeast and knead it until a uniform texture dough forms.
Cover the dough and place it to a 68°F – 81°F /20°C – 27°C corner to double for 45 – 90 minutes.
Roll the dough out to a square. Size doesn’t really matter but in this case it is about a 7″ / 18cm dough.
On a parchment paper measure out the slab of butter we are about to fill into our dough. We need about half the size of the rolled out dough which in this case 4″ / 10cm.
Wrap it up tightly then with a rolling pin roll the separate slabs into one. Mind to keep the parchment paper in shape. It’s a bit tricky but doable.
Place the butter onto the dough, rotated by a quarter turn.
Wrap the butter by folding the opposite corners of the dough on each other. (If the butter sticks to the parchment paper because it warmed up, wrap it back and put it into the fridge to chill for 15 – 30 minutes.)
Flip the dough, flour both sides and roll it out to a 12″x 6″ / 30cm x 15cm rectangle. The butter may need a bit of gentle whacking and nudging but it will get there.
Fold the top side of the dough down to the middle then fold the bottom side of the dough up to the middle. The two sides should meet at the middle now.
Fold the dough onto itself at the middle where the two edges meet. It’s a pretty arduous technique but French do it this way, so This, is the way.
Wrap the dough into something that prevents it to dry out and put it into the fridge for half an hour to cool off.
Roll the dough again into a 12″x 6″ / 30cm x 15cm rectangle. Luckily, one of the sides are already done so we only have to work on matching it with the other.
Now comes the second folding technique the single fold. Mark the dough into 3 parts then fold 2/3 of the dough to the 1/3 mark.
Fold 1/3 of the dough over the two third. It sounds more difficult than it looks.
Wrap the dough up and let it cool off in the fridge another 30 minutes.
Roll the dough out and use it as desired.