Puff pastry tart with fruits

Many of you write to me saying that you love laminated doughs, but that you are very lazy to make them. The process, resting-time, rising… But today I’m going to leave you like making homemade puff pastry with very simple steps and without rising. Yes, I haven’t gone crazy! Surely many of you didn’t know it, but to make puff pastry (and according to what elaborations) it is not necessary to subject the dough to a fermentation process. As in this Puff pastry tart with fruits that I am going to leave you today, for example.

I know that it may seem impossible for a dough, such as puff pastry, to grow in the oven without using an element that makes it yeast like yeast or sourdough. But this process can be carried out.

What is puff pastry?

Puff pastry is a type of laminated dough made with flour, water and butter. Its taste is quite neutral, which allows us to use it in both salty and sweet preparations being one of the bases of pastry. If we use it for the latter, we can add sugar and thus give it a sweet flavor.

In my case I also add a little honey. I do it with all kinds of laminated dough as I learned from Olivier Magne. Honey gives this type of dough a crunchier texture and also helps to preserve it.

Puff pastry origin.

The origin of the puff pastry is not very clear and is somewhat confusing since there are several stories and legends that make it difficult to locate the true authorship.

Yes, we can know that puff pastry or the process of stretching and laminating doughs was invented many years ago. An example of this is Arab pastries. Many of its sweets are made with very fine doughs and brushed with fat to encourage their lamination or creation of layers. In Egypt a type of dough was prepared with oil instead of butter, which was made known to the Greek and Italic population.

Some argue that Marie-Antoine Carême, established the 5-turn method that is still used today. Others say that the modern version of puff pastry was devised by François Pierre de la Varenne (who invented béchamel sauce). It is also said that it was a mistake of an apprentice who forgot to integrate butter into a brisée dough and then did it…

Why don’t I need yeast to get my puff pastry rise?

Although we think that for a dough to grow/rise we must add yeast, this is not always the case.  In the case of puff pastry, the dough grows and swells thanks to the evaporation of water contained in the dough, which tends to rise as it is subjected to a heat source. The layers of fat melt at the same time as they separate the layers of dough from each other. Thanks to the pressure exerted by the steam, the dough swells as the layers become thinner and crispier as the cooking time passes.

If the number of layers is excessive, these gases are too tight in a vertical direction and escape horizontally as soon as the sides expand sufficiently. On the contrary, the number of layers is insufficient the expansion of the gases occurs so quickly that it does not give time to solidify the layer of dough, producing a sudden decrease of the puff pastry.

What should I take into account when making puff pastry at home?

The proportion of puff pastry is determined by the flour and fat. The flour can be in equal or superior proportion to the fat matter, being able to reach until near the double in some cases.

On the other hand, the fat should never exceed the amount of flour.

FLOUR: The first doubt that can arise to all of you is the type of flour to use. In my case I have used a flour from the Molino Pasini called “Primitiva 300“. It is a flour with an approximate strength W=300 and works very well to make laminated doughs. In any case, this is not the only flour you can make with.

Puff pastry can be made using a strength flour W=200 and also gives very good results by mixing pastry flour and bread/AP flour. We must use a flour with 9-10% protein. Normally the percentage of water is around 45-55% final hydration, but remember that this factor will depend on the type of flour you use since each has a different absorption capacity.

WATER: When we make dough that we are going to laminate, the ideal is to work with all the cold elements. From flour to water. It is not necessary to use a specific type of water, by this I mean mineral waters.

BUTTER: Here we may find ourselves with a dilemma because butter is an important element to work with this type of doughs. We need a butter with a small amount of water and a high melting point. Butter from the supermarket usually contains a lot of water, which is the opposite of what we need to work with this type of dough. KerryGold, Président … are the ones I have worked with that have given me the best results.

Of course, if you have the possibility to buy a dry butter like Elle & Vire, Corman… Fantastic.

If you can’t access any of these types of butter, we can always dry ours with flour. This process consists of mixing the butter with flour in order to dry it. But under no circumstances use margarine, the result will not be the same, in addition to leaving a bad taste in the final product.

The dough and butter should have the same consistency.

To obtain good results in our puff pastry, we must work with these two elements trying to have the same consistency and temperature. Ideally, they should be around 53º-57ºF/12º-14ºC.

If we work with a very cold butter, when it is laminated, it will crack and will not maintain uniformity when it is stretched, making it impossible for layers to form correctly.

If, on the other hand, the butter has a higher temperature than the dough, it will melt and penetrate into the layers of dough.

The dough should not have a higher hydration than I specify, otherwise it will not withstand the lamination process and will be interspersed with the layers of butter leaving a result far from what we are looking for.

Laminating.

A very important point during the rolling process is to keep our dough cold. In order to do this without problems, I recommend that you cool the dough after each fold. Very well wrapped in film and inside a bag to prevent it from drying out, just as we did with Danish dough.

In a cold season we can do it in the fridge, but when temperatures are around 71º-75ºF/22 º-24 º C, we can rest keeping the dough in the freezer.

How many folds should I make? The more, the better?

Here we must keep in mind that the fewer the layers, the more complicated it is for the dough to grow. But the greater the number of layers, the smaller the final volume. It is important to take into account the elaboration that we are going to carry out.

To calculate the number of layers we will do it in the following way:

S = Kⁿ

• S = the total number of layers of fat (butter)
• K = number of layers of total dough (dough+grease) in a fold

S = Kⁿ = 4⁴ = 256 folds

To this quantity we must add 1 because the number of layers of dough is always one more than that of butter since both the top layer and bottom are of dough.

What’s the meaning of this?

The number of layers grows in proportion, the additions are multiplied by the total of those already obtained. When counting the layers, we must take into account that as we are making the folds, the upper layers of dough without butter are integrated with the adjacent (because they are of the same nature), reducing to one layer what were originally two layers. This happens thanks to the pressure of the laminate. For that reason we add 1 to the total of layers.

To make puff pastry…

That we will use for tartlets, volt au vents… We must make a total of 5-6 single folds or 1 double fold and 3 single folds. Approximately.

From here on, the more folds we make, the less volume our puff pastry will have. For example, to elaborate a puff pastry that will be destined to make mille feuilles, 10 simple folds are usually made.

One important thing, if we do a lot of folding, there will come a time when the layers of dough and fat will be so thin that when they are cooked, they will melt together and will not give rise to layers. More than 10 simple folds is not going to give good results.

Manipulation of the dough and baking.

We must always handle the puff pastry with care so as not to damage the layers. At this point it will always help that the dough is cold. When you are about to cut the puff pastry, try to do so with a knife / cutter that makes clean cuts. This is important so that the dough keeps a straight cut and grows correctly when baked.

When baking puff pastry, we should try to maintain a temperature around 410º-445ºF/210º-230ºC. A higher or lower temperature will not benefit us. Cooking should be done without steam and no convection, unlike other types of laminated dough. If you don’t want the puff pastry to grow, you just need to puncture the surface with a fork.

Problems that we can obtain when making puff pastry.

• Irregularly rising puff pastry: Poor distribution of fat during lamination or poorly executed folds.
• Shrinking puff pastry: Use of flour that is too strong, too little rest or both.
• Puff pastry that loses fat: Few folds. The greater the loss, the more layers the puff pastry will lack. Baking at a low temperature also causes a loss of fat.
• Low rise puff pastry: Flours that are too loose or too many folds. Excessive rest or an oven with little heat can also influence.
• Raw puff pastry in the middle: Oven too strong or pieces too thick.
• Puff pastry shrunk at the top: Oven too strong.