Basic Recipes > Puff Pastry

How to make puff pastry:
This pastry requires quite a lot of patience but is well worth the effort. It is a very light and buttery pastry making it ideal for mille feuille, vol-au-vents and sausage rolls.





Ingredients

2 cups (8oz) plain/all purpose flour
1 cup (8oz) unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
cold water
(see measure conversions for more information)

Method

- Sift the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl.
- Take about a heaped teaspoon of the butter and rub it into the flour.
- Add the lemon juice and form into a stiff dough, adding a little water if necessary.
- With cool hands, knead the pastry lightly.
- Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface, shaping it into an oblong.
- Make the oblong twice as long as it is wide.
- Place the rest of the butter into the middle of one half of the pastry and then fold the other half of the pastry over the butter.
- Press on top of the butter with the rolling pin and then roll the pastry out again into an oblong.
- This time make the oblong three times as long as it is wide.
- Fold the pastry into three and put into the fridge to rest for 15 minutes.
- Roll, fold and rest six more times before finally placing in the fridge again for a few hours (or over night if convenient).
- The pastry is then ready to use.

Here are links to our other pastry recipes:


Biscuit Crumb
Biscuit Pie
Choux
Cream
Flaky
Fleur
Hot Water Crust
Potato
Rough Puff
Shortcrust
Suet Crust