Hi Bold Bakers!
Pastry-making is Baking 101.
It is really important to know how to do it.
Today I’m going to show you how to do a much requested Puff Pastry recipe that my
Mum gave to me.
It is fool-proof, and it is so much easier than traditional puff pastry.
So we are going to start out in a nice big large bowl.
So add in your flour, and then a nice generous pinch of salt.
And then just give these a little mix together.
Now when you look in old home economics books, they’ll always say, “chill your bowl,
chill your ingredients—chill everything!”
And it’s not a bad idea because it keeps your pastry really nice and cold.
I know it’s a little bit old-school, but it works.
So those are our dry ingredients.
So now, for my secret ingredient.
This is what will yield you the best pastry ever.
Ta-da—frozen butter!
Rock hard butter—this is my secret to scones, to biscuits, to pastry, etc.
Now, what do you do with the frozen butter?
You get a nice, big grater.
Put your grater into your bowl.
And then, take your butter with the wrapper on it.
This is going to protect your fingers a little bit and also stop the butter from heating
up in your hand.
And then just go ahead and grate the butter directly in.
This could not be easier.
You do not have to get your hands in there.
You don’t have to get all messy.
The grater does all the work for you.
So let me give you a little bit of science behind this.
Small, little bits of butter, all the way throughout the pastry, means you get little,
tiny flakes—exactly what you want from a puff pastry.
So think about this.
Butter has water in it.
When you bake water, what happens?
It evaporates, and creates steam.
So all the tiny little bits of butter throughout your pastry will create steam all throughout
your pastry.
Steam rises up, and you get lovely layers of flakiness.
If you have made traditional puff pastry before, you will know that it is a labor of love.
There is a lot of butter, a lot of folding, a lot of layers, a lot of resting—it actually
takes quite a lot of time.
This is way less time.
It is a much easier technique, and you get the exact same results.
So why would you not do it this way?
As you’re grating in your butter, go ahead and knock it off your grater.
Make sure it’s all going into the flour.
Give it a mix into the flour, and then continue grating in the rest of your butter.
A little safety tip: when you’re grating, you actually don’t need two full sticks
of butter.
So grate it down to the amount that you need, and then stop, because this is going to protect
your fingers as well.
So just save that little bit at the end.
Okay, perfect.
Now that’s all our butter, and with a knife, just stir in that butter all the way throughout.
You can see exactly what we were going for: tiny, little lumps of butter.
Now we’re going to add in our liquid.
Now what I have here, is some cold water.
Like I said, all of your ingredients have to be cold.
Now into our water, we’re going to add in, a few squeezes of lemon juice.
Now you’re probably thinking, “why do you put lemon juice into a pastry?”
And the reason is that it tenderizes the pastry.
It keeps it nice and soft.
So it’s an important ingredient.
Cold liquid into our cold flour and butter mix, and what you want to do is pour it all
the way around.
But a little tip is to just hold back a little bit of water because you also never know how
much you’re going to need.
So hold back a little bit of the liquid, and then we’re going to go back in with our
knife, and stir it together.
If you add in too much liquid, the thing about it is you can’t take it out.
If you don’t add enough liquid in, you can add in a little bit more.
So just always be a little bit careful.
Now you just want to add enough liquid so you can see your dough coming together.
There we go, that’s a little bit better.
I can feel it coming together.
Lovely.
Now I’m going to put my hands in there, and start to bring this pastry together.
For those of you who have seen all my other pastry videos, dough videos, the same rules
apply for this pastry.
You have a nice ball of pastry, and you got a clean bowl.
A clean bowl means you did it right.
Here is my pastry.
I’m going to pat him down, and I’m going to wrap him in some cling wrap.
Make sure that he’s good and snug.
So that’s it: simple puff pastry.
Now I’m going to pop this guy into the fridge for a minimum of one hour, and then he is
ready to use.
So check the recipe that you’re making, to follow baking instructions, how to roll
it out, all those sorts of things.
Now if you don’t want to use it straight away, you can leave it in the fridge for up
to three days.
Also, it freezes fantastically, and you can leave it in the freezer for up to eight weeks.
I baked off a savory pop-tart using my puff pastry to show you what it looks like.
As you can see, there are loads of layers of flaky, buttery pastry.
This is exactly what we want.
I have lots more Bold Baking Basics recipes, just like this one, so make sure you check
them out!