Puff pastry is made using a special technology. As a result, during cooking, the layers do not stick together, but slightly separate from each other, forming fluffy and crumbly baked goods. Puff pastry is often considered tastier than usual, but it is much more difficult to prepare it, it requires a lot of patience and a lot of time.
Secrets of making puff pastry
When preparing puff pastry, the same ingredients are used as for regular dough: flour, water, yeast, milk, eggs, sugar, salt. The secret to separating the layers is that there are thin layers of butter between them. During heating, the oil melts and prevents the dough from sticking together, as a result, the layers separate from each other, and the oil is gradually absorbed. A good puff pastry becomes crispy after baking and looks airy and light. The more layers, the better the dough is considered.
Puff pastry can be yeast-free and yeast-free; there are also more unusual options for its preparation - for example, with the addition of cottage cheese, on beer.
Today, you can buy frozen puff pastry in any supermarket, but its taste and quality will be inferior to that prepared at home. The main difference is that the layers of the store dough are most often coated with margarine, which is known to be harmful to human health.
The key to making good puff pastry is to use fresh, high-quality butter. It should be cold, a little hard, preferably salty, not sweet - this will make the baked goods more fluffy.
The higher the fat content of the product, the more tasty and aromatic the products are.
Delicious dough is made from premium flour, cold water or milk, you can add egg yolks to make the baked goods tender and fluffy. It is important to add a little salt, it makes the dough elastic, but if you oversalt, it will turn out to be tasteless. Lemon juice or vinegar will increase elasticity, so the layers will not tear when rolled.
Puff pastry recipe
For yeast puff pastry, you need two glasses of flour, a glass of water or milk, a pack of butter, a tablespoon of sugar, half a teaspoon of salt, and 20 grams of yeast. The butter should be kept in the refrigerator until the dough is kneaded. In a small amount of water or milk, you need to dilute the yeast, pour the rest into a bowl, add salt and gradually add flour, while kneading. At the end, you can add a little butter - you can use both butter and vegetable. The dough is left to rise for three hours, covered with a napkin and placed in a warm place.
The resulting dough needs to be rolled out in the form of a rectangle, put half the butter in the center. This oily piece is covered with one end of the layer, the remaining oil is put on it, which is covered with the other end of the layer. Now you need to roll out this layer again, fold it in four, roll it out again, and repeat this procedure several times until you get more than thirty layers. Yeast-free dough can be prepared according to the same recipe without using yeast, immediately after kneading.
