Puff Pastry: Everything You Need To Know

by Giselle Lobo Writer & Blogger

Puff pastries are buttery, light, and flaky doughs used in both sweet and savoury dishes, right from appetisers to the main course to desserts. They involve only three ingredients – flour, butter, and salt. Yet, it fluffs to a great height with no added leavening agent. The French have perfected the techniques, but the dough for puffs appears in recipes worldwide. They resemble a croissant with visible airy layers.

Though both are laminated doughs, puff pastry does not include yeast or other such leavening ingredients. To make it, bakers mix dough of flour and water, roll them, put dabs of butter over it, fold the dough over the butter, and roll them flat again. Repeated rolling and folding results in the finished dough with many layers.

The water in the dough and the butter produces steam, which lifts the layers inside the oven. The separation of these layers makes the pastry light and gives a flaky look. It is not complicated to make a puff pastry but a painstaking process. It includes elaborate rolling techniques for forming those hundreds of layers, and since the butter should be cold, it takes immense pressure to roll the dough flat.

Besides, the dough should chill between each rolling and folding. The effort is demanding and time-consuming.

Why do we love them?

The reason is layers. When baked, the butter layer steams and starts separating the dough layer above it, pushing the dough up and creating air pockets. Hence, the laminated pastries are so flaky, light, crisp, and delicious. It looks, feels, and tastes fancy, but someone else does all that work. It means you can buy them easily from a patisserie and enjoy it, without any effort. So, what is not to like?

Varieties

The most renowned form is frozen puffs. It lets the home cooks use them without making them from scratch. They come in sheets, which you should thaw in the refrigerator overnight, or pre-formed cups or shells. The sheets come unfolded, and if you try to thaw them at room temperature, you risk unfolding the sheets soon and might break or thaw them to such a point that they become sticky and difficult to work with.

Uses

As mentioned, you use the puff pastry as a sweet or savoury item. Big sheets work for larger foods like a beef Wellington or baked brie. For smaller items, like pastry puffs, palmiers, or tiny hors d’oeuvre shells, cut the pastry sheets to the correct size or buy a pre-cut variety. You can use the pastry scraps to garnish any dish or cut them into decorative shapes and use them as eggshells for gluing them outside the pastry.

What do they taste like?

They are buttery with a slightly crunchy crust and light and airy texture. The neutral flavour skews sweet or savoury, depending on the use.

Substitutes

Frozen puffs save time and effort, and good brands produce similar homemade results. Sometimes, bakers also use phyllo dough for swapping them. It is crispier and does not rise much. So, they work well for pie crusts or tart shells.

Always keep puffs bought from a patisserie in the freezer until further use. Homemade ones can be refrigerated for many days or frozen up to a month by tightly wrapping them in plastic.