mix, mix…stir, stir

This must be the best pastry trick ever! Cut a piece of puff pastry, put any tasty topping on it, and bake in a hot oven (400 degrees F) until golden brown (25 minutes or so). Anything baked on puff pastry seems to taste fantastic and look elegant. Memorize these three simple steps and you will never be caught in a bind when you need to whip up a dessert or even a savory hors d’oeuvre.

These tarts really were as simple as a piece of dough, topped with fruit, a light sprinkle of brown sugar and a dot of butter. I had some almond pastry cream hiding in the freezer so I added a dollop to each pastry before adding the fruit, and in honor of cinnamon month here at TableFare I dusted the apple and pear tarts with some freshly ground true cinnamon.

Once I used up the two apples and one pear I had, I started rummaging for toppings for the rest of my dough. The rhubarb tarts are just sliced rhubarb with a bit of honey and cardamom. I still had two naked rounds of dough and turned to some savory toppings. A light sprinkle of grated Monterey Jack cheese, a few thinly sliced onions, chopped garlic scapes and red bell pepper garnished with a light touch of olive oil, salt, pepper and smoked paprika. These would make an outstanding snack for an hors d’oeuvre party and they don’t even need to be served hot. This type of pastry is also really easy to pack and eat out of hand making it perfect for a picnic.

There is really only one thing that could trip you up with this oh-so-simple recipe that you now have tucked up your sleeve, okay, maybe two things. One; you need to have puff pastry and two; you need to keep that pastry dough cold. The first issue is not such a big one because really good puff pastry is sold in the freezer section of most grocery stores. The fact that it’s frozen does require a little planning because it needs to be thawed in the refrigerator before it can be used. The key to buying good puff pastry is to read the ingredients and make sure it’s made with butter. Puff pastry made with butter is more expensive, but you’re getting off easy on the work, so spring for the fancy stuff, it really does taste better.

The second issue is you need to keep the pastry dough cold, which means work quickly and toss it back in the refrigerator if it starts to get soft. After rolling and cutting the dough into individual portions, chill it before piling on the toppings and baking. Puff pastry is referred to as a laminated dough and is made up of 729 layers of dough each separated by a layer of fat. Are you wondering who counted?

It’s math. The first step in making puff pastry is to roll out a flour/water dough and top it with a layer of butter or some sort of fat. The dough is folded over the fat into thirds creating 3 layers of dough each separated by a layer of fat. This laminate of dough and fat is chilled and then rolled out again and once again folded in thirds, so now the dough is 9 layers, this is repeated a total of six times and if you keep multiplying, the finished dough is in fact 729 very thin layers. The reason it’s important to keep the dough cold is so the fat stays cold and maintains the distinct layers. If the fat melts into the dough, you lose the benefit of the laminate construction and won’t get the puff, and therefore won’t get the spectacular sensation of biting into hundreds of distinct crispy flaky layers of pure delight. The puff is generated from the water content of the fat vaporizing and expanding the air between the layers of dough, so the layers of fat need to be distinct and the oven needs to be hot. To the simple recipe add this simple rule; keep the dough cold, get the oven hot.

An additional tip: use a very sharp knife to cut the dough so the layers don’t melded together on the cut line from being pressed with a dull blade. I actually didn’t remember this and used a ring mold to cut my rounds; had I used a nice sharp knife, I probably would have gotten a puffier edge around the fruit.

I took this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe as an opportunity to try making puff pastry, which I have never done before. Don’t be overly impressed just yet. I used a quick puff pastry method where the fat is initially cut into the flour like it is when making pie crust or biscuits and then only three rounds of folding and rolling the dough are used to create the laminate.  It was actually quite easy and I am thrilled with the results. The biggest challenge was the 70 degree F temperature in my kitchen! I rolled the dough out on a granite slab that I had pre-chilled by placing a sheet pan filled with ice cubes on it. Also, while cutting out rounds on one end of the dough I set a cold sheet pan (not one filled with ice because it will sweat and get water all over the dough) over the rest of the dough to keep it chilled.

Jessica of My Baking Heart gets all the credit for the great recipe selection this week. Thanks to her, my baking skills have expanded to include puff pastry. She has Dorie’s recipe posted on her blog, but you already have the three steps memorized along with the two rules and one tip, right?

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours . 77 recipes completed 144 to go!

All photos by David Peterman unless otherwise noted

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 9:31 pm and is filed under Tuesdays with Dorie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.