Puff Pastry

Pâte feuilletée in French or simply puff pastry is my absolute favorite pastry ever! :) I really love the light and flaky texture of it, and not to mention the buttery flavor!:) I love dishes/desserts that uses puff pastry; I think it just makes a dish more special. Like a simple chicken pie would become an elegant looking dish when puff pastry is used instead of the more common option, pâte brisée. Plus, the pie would taste better with the buttery pastry!:p

It's definitely not the simplest pastry to make. It requires a lot of time and patience to create those infamous layers in the pastry. That's why some restaurants, bakeries and pastry shops opt for buying frozen puff pastries instead.

Since I have quite some time to spare, I've decided to make puff pastry from scratch!

To start of, you need two components: the dough and the butter block. Butter block is simply butter shaped into square. Most recipes will ask you to pound the butter with a rolling pin until it shapes up. I found it easier to just leave the butter at room temperature, then when it's spreadable, shape it into a square (like as if spreading butter cream on a cake) then chill until ready to be used. Voila, butter block. :p Anyway...

So then you roll the dough out to a square (It doesn't have to be perfect;p); put the butter block on the center then fold all sides of the dough onto the butter. You'll end up having something that looks like a parcel. Then you have to chill the parcel for at least 30 minutes.

Then you roll the parcel into a long rectangle.

Then fold the the dough into three; chill for at least 30 minutes again.

Then you start the whole process again: roll the dough into a rectangle, fold into three, chill. You have to do this process six or eight times. Yes, 6 or 8 times!

All the effort of making puff pastry from scratch was definitely worth it! I kept the dough in the fridge for now cause I have yet to decide what to do with it. But, I cut a small part of the dough to bake just to see if my puff pastry's a success:p

And it was! I shaped the pastry into croissant cause that's the first shape I've thought of. :p And the other one is a diamond-shaped pastry. :) 

Component used for this treat:

• Puff Pastry

Bisou bisou,

Charlotte