In a puff pastry bite, there’s the deliciousness of 400 layers!
Origin
A very similar dough to puff pastry was already used by Egyptians and in the Middle East thousands of years ago, as shown by the existance of sweet treats such as baklava. However, puff pastry as we know it today was invented by Marie-Antonie Careme, a French chef who, in the mid-eighteenth century, was the first to prepare the dough with butter and to establish the six fundamental steps to make the dough soft and airy.
Cookit
Its preparation and steps are not too difficult to execute but it does require a long time to make. Once the dough is made (with flour, Manitoba flour, water and salt) you need to design a square and place it between two sheets of oven paper, use rolling pin to make it flatter. Now you need to use this to wrap a knob of butter (fresh from the fridge) and use the rolling pin again by doing oblique movements: by doing this, you’ll start to create the first foil but be careful! It is fundamental to distribute the butter evenly! Fold it like a book and let it rest for half an hour. Repeat this operation four times. As we said, you need time and patience. This is why most of the time, nowadays, people use premade, frozen or fresh sheets of puff pastry. Puff pastry is used to make desserts such as croissants, cakes and pastries but also to prepare savory dishes such as quiches, savory snacks, pizza and vol-au-vent.
Did you know that
Puff pastry is usually prepares with either margarine or vegetable oils instead of butter as they are cheaper and easy to work with. But not in France, there they only use butter, otherwise they will wrinkle their noses.
