In this article we will talk about what you can cook from puff pastry. I must say that not only excellent cakes come out of it. No less tasty are the baskets, shuttlecocks, croissants, snack cakes with all kinds of fillings, and not only sweet ones. A dessert or an unusual sandwich for breakfast for the whole family, an exquisite appetizer for a romantic dinner, ornate cake of puff pastry - all this requires a long preparatory work. These pancakes can be whipped up. But puff pastry requires a lot of effort, several hours of time and ... a refrigerator. But the result is worth it! Soft, crispy, thin, excellent holding cream. And if you don’t have time, you can buy ready-made dough in a supermarket.
How to knead puff pastry (ingredients)
In confectionery of this kind, the filling or cream is the easiest phase of the culinary process. Leave it for later. Whatever you are preparing to bake - an apple cake from puff pastry or flounces with tuna - first you need to knead and roll the base. For it, it is necessary to choose flour with a high content of gluten (from soft varieties of wheat). Salt and vinegar (or citric acid) are also needed, even for desserts. Butter (200 grams per kilogram of dough), which in no case can be replaced with margarine or cooking oil, should be used at a temperature of 14-17 ° C, when it is most plastic. It will take a couple more eggs, milk or water.
Kneading, oil preparation, interbedding
These are the three phases of making puff pastry. First, pour the flour in a slide. Shake the egg in a glass, add water, add citric acid or vinegar, salt. In a flour hill we make a depression like a crater. Pour the egg mixture into it and knead until smooth. If the dough is too thin, add flour, and if it is too steep, add water. For elasticity, you can add one or two tablespoons of butter.
We cover the gingerbread man with a napkin so as not to “wind up”, and put in the refrigerator for at least half an hour. We soften the oil and mix with a small amount of flour. It will become dry and sticky, will be well distributed between the layers. From this mass we form layers about 2 cm thick. Cool them to 14 ° C. And finally, the last phase is interbedding. We roll the gingerbread man into a layer no more than a centimeter thick, and we are zealous at the edges. In the center, where the dough is wider, spread the butter. We close it with an "envelope", pinching the edges. Roll out again into a thin layer. Connect the opposite ends of the square in the middle, again create a single layer. Fold the dough in half and put it out in the cold for half an hour. If you carelessly take this last phase, the cake from the puff pastry will not turn out fluffy, will not rise.
Stand
This procedure does not require any special efforts from you, but it is very important. If you do not give the dough a good “rest” in the refrigerator, it will simply tear during the last rolling. We cannot name the exact time of standing. It depends on the elasticity of gluten, the thickness of the cakes that will form your cake from puff pastry. The procedure of rolling into a very thin layer, folding it in half, four and then hiding in the refrigerator for thirty minutes should be repeated about four times. Rolling pin you need to work smoothly and slowly. After the last rolling, the dough should rest at room temperature for about twenty minutes.
Baking
If you bought a store sheet dough, then you do not need to read the previous text. But the final stage, baking, requires some culinary skill. If you want to cook a “quick” cake (from ready-made puff pastry), you must first defrost the bag at room temperature. After 20 minutes, carefully remove the cellophane film.
Preheat the oven to 220 ° C. Lightly dust the working surface with flour and unfold a tight bundle on it. With a sharp knife, in one sharp motion, cut the dough into several pieces. Roll out thin layers of them. We spread the cake on the baking sheet moistened with water and often prick its surface with a fork to prevent the appearance of large bubbles. You can grease it with an egg. Bake for about a quarter of an hour. It is necessary to apply the cream after the cake is completely cooled.
Puff pastry cake: recipe "Dream"
There is another method of manufacturing a “quick” sheet base. Three hundred grams of butter should be chopped quickly with 4 cups of flour, add an egg, four cups of granulated sugar, a little milk, a pinch of salt and soda, quenched with vinegar. Knead the elastic dough from this and put it in the refrigerator. Bake three cakes (since they are thick, the cooking time increases to 20-25 minutes). The cream is prepared very simply: apple or plum jam is mixed with the same amount of sour cream. Spread the filling on the still hot cakes.
So different "Napoleons"
In fact, this cake, beloved by everyone, is made from shortcrust pastry, and then the finished cakes are soaked in moist butter cream. After a night in the fridge, the dessert just melts in your mouth. But you can make this cake from puff pastry. Recipe number 1 is as follows. We divide the kilogram of dough into three or four pieces, leave one for rolling, and hide the others in the refrigerator for a while. We lay the cake on a baking sheet moistened with water, pierce it with a fork in several places. So do with all the pieces of dough. The cooled cakes can be layered with custard, butter, sour cream or whipped cream with jam.
Another "Napoleon" (cake)
Cut the puff pastry into eight or ten pieces. Koloboks are kept in the freezer for two hours. Roll cakes very thinly, bake until golden brown. Cool down. We cook a can of condensed milk for two to three hours. Mix milk with a packet of mascarpone dessert cheese. We smear the cakes with this cream, slightly compacting the cake with our hands. After a night in the refrigerator, it is saturated enough. We decorate the top of the product with the rest of the cream, candied fruits, nuts.
What else are cakes
As we noted above, confectionery products do not have to be sweet. After all, there are snack cakes made of puff pastry. They are different.
You can cook a wonderful liver cake using pate, mushrooms and carrots with onions. Fry vegetables (300 grams). Mix with paste. We fry finely chopped mushrooms (in the same quantity as vegetables). From puff pastry we form three or four cakes, bake them for five to ten minutes. When they have cooled, we begin to make a cake. Grease the bottom cake with mayonnaise, spread the paste. On the second we put mushrooms, vegetables. We alternate the fillings until we get to the upper crust. We just grease it with mayonnaise, decorate the top with chopped herbs and pitted olives.
If you are a lover of light salads, you can bake puff pastries - kegs of dough. Inside, you can put light-salted salmon, cut into pieces and mixed with herbs and cheese, or boiled chicken breast with vegetables, or foie gras with olives. The main thing is that the filling salad should not be too liquid, otherwise the puff will spill over.
With this test, you can bake apples. Cut the middle of the fruit, fill the hole with sugar and cinnamon, wrap in a layer of dough. Bake until cooked. If there is no sheet, you can make a cake from puff and yeast dough. It is also sold in stores. It is baked in a similar way, only we do not spray the baking sheet with water, but cover it with parchment paper.