Suitable for home cooking, puff pastry recipe
Baking from puff pastry is a well-deserved love of many gourmets. Loose and light, this dough just melts in your mouth, allowing you to enjoy the taste of various fillings with pleasure and not overload the stomach. Recently, there are fewer and fewer housewives who cook puff pastry at home, although there is no doubt that each of them has their own exclusive puff pastry recipe . Of course, modern women’s free time is becoming less and less, and the quality of ready-made dough offered by stores is becoming higher, and yet what is cooked with one's own hands can hardly replace a purchased semi-finished product.
Puff pastry is yeast and fresh.
Fresh puff pastry has many varieties, you can add ingredients such as eggs, milk, kefir or you can do without them, but there are general rules, the implementation of which guarantees an excellent result.
- Before baking, puff pastry products are cooled for some time, avoiding freezing.
- The baking tray is only moistened with cold water without greasing it with fat.
- Gently cover the top of the products with yolk, making sure that the edges of the puff remain dry. Otherwise, they will stick together during baking and prevent the dough from rising.
- Cooled products are quickly put in a preheated oven so that the oil does not melt.
The classic puff pastry recipe includes the following components: 500 grams of wheat flour, 400 grams of butter, cold water, a teaspoon of any acid (citric, tartar or vinegar), and ¼ teaspoon of fine salt. It is very important that the flour for puff pastry was only of the highest grade, the water was icy, and the amount of salt and acid strictly corresponded to the proportions indicated in the recipe, otherwise the quality of the finished products would decrease significantly.
The preparation of puff pastry begins with the fact that the total amount of flour is halved, one half is thoroughly mixed with chilled butter, rolled into a square layer having a thickness of about 2 cm and placed in a refrigerator.
The second half of the flour is poured with a slide and a small hole is made in it, into which ½ cup of ice water is poured. Salt and citric acid are pre-dissolved in water (lemon juice can be used instead of acid). Knead the elastic dough, cover it with a kitchen towel and leave for half an hour. After that, this dough is also rolled into a square, making sure that it turns out twice as much as a square from butter and flour.
Next, home-made puff pastry is prepared as follows: in the middle of a larger square of dough, place the smaller one - from butter mixed with flour, after which the edges of the dough are lifted, folded like an envelope and pinched. They put the envelope on a table sprinkled with flour, and smoothly roll out in all directions to a thickness of 1 cm.
The resulting rectangle of dough is cleaned of excess flour, folded four times and again sent back to the refrigerator for half an hour.
Next, roll out the dough again, fold it four times and cool for 30 minutes.
A similar operation is performed for the third time, after which the dough is used to prepare products.
There is also a recipe for chopped instant puff pastry :
Chilled butter (200 gr.) Is cut into pieces, add two glasses of flour and chopped together until crumbs are formed. The resulting mixture is collected slide, make a recess, as in the first recipe, and gradually add ½ cup of water, combined with a pinch of salt and a tablespoon of vinegar. Ready dough is placed in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour, after which it is considered ready for baking.