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Hey guys, salut, this is Alex. So, last week I released a video about Beef Wellington. And in case you missed it,
at the end of it, I did a tasting session where I had been blown away by the beef and it's tenderness, for sure.
But even more by the homemade puff pastry by its flavor, by its light and delicate texture to it.
And obviously, by its crispiness.
So, crispiness is at the core of a puff pastry. It's just written in its DNA.
I have yet to stumble upon a non-crispy puff pastry.
One layer in this puff pastry is not crispy, per se.
It's clicky.
Maybe, it's snappy.
But in fact, the cripsy sensation comes from the stacking of layers.
When they break, you've got that sequence of snap, that just produces...
The crispy sensation
And I guess, following that reasoning, it's just fair to think that
if we were to include more and more layers, we would just get an even more crispier sensation.
So basically this week, I want to investigate puff pastry. I want to know how it works.
And I want to see, obviously, can we improve crispiness by increasing the number of layers to a million.
Okay, let's find out.
So, first off we need to make a détrempe, as known as a lean dough.
Flour, in this case, 500 grams. Water, 250 grams. And salt, 10 grams.
And then, obviously the second component, since it is a French recipe, butter.
The mass of butter you need is half the mass of the other ingredients.
First of all, you want to mix all these ingredients. And then, you're gonna flatten the butter to a 22cm square slab.
Because you want to encapsulate the butter inside the lean dough.
And that would be the first and only operation before the lamination actually starts.
So to illustrate the layers and the lamination properly, I'm making some black dough.
using activated charcoal in the water.
That should give us the nice contrast we need just to see those beautiful layers of both butter and dough.
The actual lamination process is in fact, a cycle.
One: you flatten the dough to about 5mm in thickness. Then, two: you fold it like a wallet.
This is called a turn. It's a bit confusing. That's just the way it is.
Then at the end, you turn it this time 90 degrees.
And that cycle needs to be repeated six times to be able to call it proper puff pastry.
Or proper French puff pastry, maybe.
Every two turns, you need to chill it in the fridge.
So it's time consuming, but it's not too much effort demanding.
At zero turns, you've got the three layers. At one turn, you've got nine layers minus two.
Because when two layers of dough are in contact, they will fuse.
Then two turns, 19 layers. Three turns, 55 layers. Four turns, 163. 5 turns, 487.
And six turns, 1557 layers.
Oui! I think we got a sequence for any given number of turns. That formula right there can give us
the number of layers.
I think that's beautiful.
So for the record, it's very hard to tell that it's a laminated dough at six turns in.
I'm gonna cut a piece and bake it in the oven.
So light. Buttery. Fluffy.
You can feel the different flakes, the different layers in between.
It's a very enjoyable experience to eat real puff pastry.
Let's us see actually how many numbers of turns I need to make to get that million layer dough.
And also, I wanna know about the thickness.
I want to know about the thickness!!!
Eight turns to be above 10000 layers.
Ten turns to be above 100000 layers.
And 12 turns to be above a million layers.
And it comes down to an outrageous thinness of 4.7nm
That's 4.7 millionth of a millimeter! Not even a meter, a millimeter!
So yes, that is completely insane, and yes, I want to experience, I want to taste that million layer dough. Let's make it!
So I'm gonna lie, it took a bit of work. I've got all the different options in terms of turns.
Zero, one, two, three, four, five, six.
More than 10000 layers.
More than 100000 layers. And more than a million layers inside this little piece of puff pastry.
Anyway, I'm gonna flatten them and bake them in the oven in the exact same temperature
And then we perform what is called in the field, a crispy test.
I can already tell that zero and one is just a pool of mess.
So, sorry for these guys, they are already disqualified.
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Right, so that just came out of the oven. So, let's start the tasting session.
I'm gonna go for zero. Crunchy!
One turn.
It's not delicate, that's for sure.
Two!
The very first one to feel like an actual pastry.
Three turns!
Pies, turnovers. This is the first one that brings out those memories.
Four turns.
This one is way more crispy. This is way better that number three for sure.
Five.
The difference between four and five is quite light.
Six turns on this one.
Oh, that's nice! Delicate, crispy. It's not like in your face.
Now, I'm stepping into unknown lands. Ten thousand layers!
I'm gonna keep my thoughts for me while I'm tasting these just because I want to process them and I want some point of comparison.
It's not what I expected.
Let me run you through it.
Starting from 8, I started losing something.
And the more you go this way, the more it starts to feel like a cake!
It does make sense. The layers are just crushed and fuzed into one another.
You're losing this puff pastry vibe that you've got over here.
I would say 3, 4, 5, 6 definitely hit the spot in terms of puff pastry.
But these... Are they really worth the effort?
So I guess it only means one thing and one thing only.
The crispiness of that million layer dough is overrated.
It's not worth it. It's a myth.
But I guess at least now we know for sure and I can start sleeping at night again.
The million layer puff pastry. Buttery, crusty dough, not in a bad way. Very delicate. But slightly crumbly and it's not crispy anymore.
That tasting session was eye-opening for me. You don't need 6 turns to make proper puff pastry.
In fact, as long as you go above 3 turns, you've got yourself some puff pastry.
And I would say I enjoyed 5 turns in puff pastry more than the six. I said it!
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Please give this video a big thumbs up, like it, and spread this everywhere.
Spread this like butter. Subscribe to the channel. Of course, if you want more geeky food videos in the future,
I'll catch up with you next time. Bye bye! Salut!