The puff recipe will appeal to many lovers of sweets, and not only. After all, there are many options for satisfying products, when cheese, sausages or meat are placed in small buns of puff pastry as filling. Puffs themselves are divided into several types. For example, they can be open and closed, the dough for them can be either yeast or yeast-free. The main difference is that in closed puffs, the filling is placed between the layers of the dough or just wrap it in the dough. If you are preparing an open puff, then the dough is cut into triangles or squares, and fruits, cheese, berries or smoked slices are laid out on top.
How to cook
The puff recipe is considered universal, so it is suitable for both soft and satisfying varieties of this dish. Many people prefer to cook them at home, this is really easy, especially if with time it’s enough to fill your hand.
It should be noted that their main secret lies not in the filling, but in the test. Therefore, it is not so important what exactly you put in it, the more important is how you prepare the dough for the puff itself. First of all, it differs in that it uses a large amount of butter.
How to make a dough?
The cooking process is as follows. Yeast or unleavened dough must be coated with oil, and then roll out the resulting sandwich several times so that the resulting layered structure. The puff turns out the more magnificent, the more layers you prepare. When the oil begins to evaporate in the oven, the layers are separated from each other, between them there is a layer of air. So, to make the puff beautiful and tasty, you need to roll out the dough as thinly as possible, while carefully monitoring that it does not tear anywhere. To do this, it is sometimes put in the refrigerator.
Then the formed puffs are filled with filling and baked in the oven. If the dough was yeast, then the baking will be more tender and soft, and if you decide to use fresh dough, then brittle and crispy.
It is worth noting that the preparation of puff is a complex, one might say, creative process, having mastered that, you will overcome another stage of culinary creativity.
Toppings for baking
Fillings for puffs can be very diverse. These are pieces of chocolate, and boiled condensed milk, and canned or fresh fruits, and jam, and cottage cheese, and dried fruits, and jam, and jam, and even marmalade.
Remember that if you use liquid jam, it should be thickened with corn starch. In this case, the filling does not leak during baking.
For aroma and unique taste, orange or lemon zest, sesame, spices, poppy seeds are often added to the filling. Sweet puffs are considered a universal dessert or a full snack with coffee and tea.
Hearty toppings
Puff pastries with unsweetened, so-called hearty fillings, as a rule, are served in the first dishes, they can act as an alternative to bread.
Among unsweetened fillings, the priority is in ham, cheese, eggs, vegetables, mushrooms, meat and potatoes. Sometimes culinary specialists can come up with original combinations. For example, eggs with onions, chicken with ham, cheese with spinach, meat with mushrooms, seafood with cream cheese.
The secret to making delicious pastries
The puff recipe contains a lot of nuances, only by implementing which you will get a really tasty product. According to the classic recipe, the puff should contain about three hundred layers of fresh and from 24 to 96 layers of yeast dough. Of course, at home it is almost impossible to achieve this. So modern housewives use simpler recipes.
So that you get a delicious puff pastry, always take flour with a high content of gluten. Grades "Krupchatka", "Extra", the first and highest grades belong to it. Preliminary it is desirable to sift it. Use cold, but not icy water. You can partially use milk, but then the dough risks losing its elasticity. It is important to put enough salt, if it is not enough, the puff with the filling will begin to blur. To ensure this does not happen, you can use lemon juice or vinegar.
Butter or margarine?
Many zealously argue on what to prepare puffs with filling - in butter or margarine. There is no definite answer, it's all about personal preferences.
Puff can be tastier with butter, but baking margarine now has such a high melting point that you can make a delicious air puff with it. The only thing is, refuse to use the spread.
Before you start cooking the puff, cool the dough a little, but do not freeze. To enhance the taste, you can add an egg or a few drops of brandy.
Jam filling
In order to prepare a puff with jam, we need:
- two sheets of puff yeast-free dough;
- 20 grams of semolina;
- 30 grams of potato starch;
- one glass of orange jam.
Defrosting the dough, it is better to work with each sheet individually. It is not necessary to roll it out too thinly, and if the dough starts to stick to the rolling pin, sprinkle it with flour.
Cut the dough into squares of about 10 by 10 centimeters. Add a little starch to the very center and lay out a full spoon of jam with a slide. Lift the left side and connect to the right side of the dough. This way you connect the bottom, top and right side. Make small cuts with the knife so that the dough does not swell.
Put puffs of jam on a baking sheet, bake in a preheated oven at a temperature of 190 degrees for half an hour. To make them a delicious ruddy color, they can be greased with yolk.
Ham filling
To get delicious puffs with ham, take the following ingredients:
- 500 grams of puff pastry;
- 400 grams of ham;
- 250 grams of hard cheese;
- two chicken eggs;
- a bunch of green onions;
- sunflower oil.
Cut the ham into strips, and grate the cheese on a coarse grater. Chop the onion finely. To make it easier, you can cook puffs from the finished dough. Mix ham, onion, cheese and one egg with each other. Beat the second egg with a fork. Roll out the dough into a thin layer and cut into small rectangles, about 6 by 12 centimeters.
Spread a tablespoon of the filling on one half of each triangle, and press the other half with a fork. Spread puffs of ham on a baking sheet pre-greased with vegetable oil. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes, the temperature should be 180 degrees.
Curd component
Puff with cottage cheese is a delicate and sweet dessert that can be compared to homemade cakes. For this recipe we will need:
- 500 grams of puff yeast-free dough;
- one chicken egg;
- 500 grams of curd mass (it can be with candied fruit or raisins);
- Wheat flour;
- two tablespoons of vegetable oil.
When you prepare yeast-free puffs, pay special attention to the dough. The packaging must be intact and the expiration date appropriate. The dough should be in the form of a plate or roll without pinches or irregularities, which indicates that it was defrosted at the stage of transportation, and therefore not very fresh.
After opening the package, defrost it according to the instructions. As a rule, for this it is recommended to leave it for a while at room temperature. Remember that you can’t freeze it again, so take exactly as much as you need.
Break the egg into a small bowl and beat until light foam develops. Sprinkle the dry surface of the countertop with a small amount of flour, roll out a layer of dough, making it as thin as possible. Cut it into small rectangles of arbitrary size with a knife. Inside each such envelope, put a little curd in the center, and brush the edges with a beaten egg.
Fold the dough by pulling one of the corners to the opposite so that you get a neat triangle. Press the edges with your fingers, and then go over them with the cloves of the fork or the flat side of the knife.
Preheat the oven for puff with cottage cheese up to 170 degrees. Grease a baking sheet with vegetable oil, lay puffs on it at a certain distance from each other so that they do not stick together. Top them with an egg, and with a toothpick make a few neat punctures. Immediately after that, put in the oven for at least a quarter of an hour.
Ready puffs according to the recipe presented above should be covered with a delicious golden crust and rise a little. Once this happened, you can take them out of the oven.
Puffs with apples
Puffs cooked at home according to this recipe will delight your loved ones during Sunday breakfast, it will be an original dessert for dinner. For cooking, we need:
- 500 grams of yeast-free dough;
- one chicken egg;
- four apples;
- 50 grams of sugar;
- 30 grams of butter;
- cinnamon to taste.
Puffing with apples should begin by dicing ripe carefully washed apples. Melt a small piece of butter in a frying pan and put apple slices there. Sprinkle them with cinnamon and granulated sugar. Apples must be stewed until soft.
In parallel, you should start cooking dough for puffs. To do this, thaw it at room temperature and roll it out a little on the countertop, a little sprinkled with flour.
Cut the dough into neat rectangles, from the back start spreading the filling. Put as much as you like, because the more the tastier. But do not overdo it so that you can pinch the edges of each puff without any problems.
Put the blind envelopes on a baking sheet, and on top grease them with yolk so that they are sure to brown and a crust forms. Puffs according to this recipe are baked in the oven at a temperature of 220 degrees, until that very golden crust finally appears.
Hearty puff
Cheesy puffs can be attributed to hearty ones. To prepare them, take:
- 500 grams of puff pastry (it can be either yeast or yeast-free, it all depends on which baking you like best - lush or crunchy);
- 200 grams of hard cheese (if you wish, you can take 100 grams of hard cheese and 100 grams of feta cheese, then you get a puff like khachapuri);
- one chicken egg;
- sesame, garlic and other spices - optional.
We heat the oven for the puff with cheese to a temperature of 200 degrees. Defrost the dough, and rub the cheese on a coarse grater. Crushed garlic, if desired, can be added to the cheese at this stage, this will give the puffs an original speck.
Roll out the dough with a thickness of no more than three millimeters and cut into approximately equal layers. In the center of each of them, start laying out the filling.
Beat the egg in a separate cup and circle the edges of the puffs with this mixture so that they stick together better. After that, fold them in the form of squares or triangles, pinching the edges with a fork. Brush with egg mass and sprinkle with sesame seeds for beauty. Cook puffs in the oven for 20 minutes.
Original cakes with cherry
In order to cook these puffs, you will need very few ingredients. You will need to take:
- 500 grams of puff yeast dough;
- half a glass of sugar;
- two tablespoons of starch;
- 300 grams of cherries.
First, prepare the filling for the puff with cherry. Put the berries in a separate bowl, removing the seeds. Pour starch and sugar there. Mix thoroughly.
Defrost the dough, roll out and cut into equal squares. On each we make incisions with a knife in the half that will be the upper part of the puff. On the second half we spread the cherry filling.
We fasten the opposite ends of the dough so that we get puffs of a triangular shape. Lubricate the edges with a beaten egg.
We spread the puffs on a baking sheet and put in the oven at a temperature of 180 degrees for 40 minutes. After they are browned, they can be taken out.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.