Puff Pastry

Hello to everyone who's reading my blog now :)

Well six weeks down one more week till my college starts again.

This summer vacations I baked alot and tried alot of new things, new recipes will be posted soon.

And recently I watched Julie and Julia I just loved every bit of that movie because I am also a foodie who loves to cook/bake. 

The funniest part was when Julie was cooking crabs, I just couldn't stop laughing :).

Anyways I recently wanted to make chicken paties but for that you have to make the puff pastry, which is quite difficult but it all comes with practice.

A nicely made puff pastry is a delight in the French cuisine. Its buttery, flaky, rich and very light with many layers.

The idea of making the puff pastry is to create many layers of the dough and the butter to be folded and turned within the dough.

Be sure that you do this work in a cool place and the area where you are making the dough should not be cluttered.

If you want an evenly layered pastry then you have be keep this in mind to roll the dough with the same thickness every time you fold it and again I will say it comes with practice.

The ingredients are as follows:

Flour  1/2 kg

Salt    1 tsp

Oil     2 tbsp

Water (for Kneeding)

Masterpuff or unipuff  (200 gm)

And for those who don't know what's masterpuff/unipuff its a kind of substitute for butter which is used in the layers while folding and it does not melt, so it makes your job much easier.

For the residents of Karachi you'll find this in Empress Market, and for the people who live abroad you can find it by the name of Crisco (all vegetable shortening).

  

Method:

Sift the flour into a mound in a big bowl and make a well in the centre. Add the salt, water and oil to the well.

Mix with four fingers until the salt dissolves.

Use your hand or an electric beater with dough attachment to pull the flour into the well and mix until blended, adding rhe remaining water if the pastry is dry. 

Work the pastry into a sticky ball.

Wrap it in lightly floured baking parchment or tea towel, then refrigerate for about 30 minutes.

I did this in easy way cut small pieces of masterpuff and after 30 minutes of refrigeration of the dough take it out and roll it into a rectangular shape with straight edges, then spread the small pieces of masterpuff which you made earlier in the center.

The picture below will help you:

Fold the bottom third of the rectangle up toward the centre, carefully aligning the edges. Brush off any flour.

Fold the top third down to make a neat square and brush off any flour.

You will have a neat square of pastry with the fold on the bottom.

Keep it for rest for atleast ten minutes. 

Roll out the pastry into a long rectangle. Again fold into thirds. Gently press 2 fingertips into the pastry to indicate that 2 turns have been completed.

Wrap the pastry and let it rest for another 10 minutes.

Give the pastry 2 more turns in the same method. Then mark it with 4 fingerprints to indicate a total of 4 turns have been completed. 

Then wrap and refrigerate it for 10 minutes more before rolling out for shaping and baking.

And that's how you make the Puff pastry it might be a little time consuming but you make make variety of things with it.

And making it at home is all worth it.

Will make your family happy.

Hoping you liked the recipe don't forget to give in your feedbacks. :)