21^st century

Puff Pastry

It is remarkable to see how little puff pastry recipes have changed over the centuries. The recipe I give here is a standard rough puff pastry recipe that is really easy and will convince you to make your own instead of using ready-made puff pastry. The difference is that this is done and dusted in 10 minutes and the butter goes in all at once, while with standard puff pastry you need to fold the butter into the pastry, roll and fold and repeat a few times with resting in the fridge in between rolls. For the recipes in this book you don’t really need to make the more time-consuming standard puff pastry, as rough puff pastry works perfectly.

Makes enough for two 20 cm (8 inch) pies. It works better to make the whole recipe and freeze the remainder if you only need half the pastry.

225 g (8 oz/1½ cups) plain (all-purpose) flour

½ teaspoon fine salt

240 g (8¾ oz) cold butter

130 ml (4¼ fl oz) ice-cold water

The quickest way to make this is to use a food processor. I’d never really used a food processor for pastry until I was experimenting with this recipe and I must say I found it an absolute improvement.

Put the flour in a large bowl, or the bowl of a food processor, and put it in the fridge to get cold. Meanwhile, cut the butter into small cubes and put it into the freezer with the water for a few minutes.

Put the flour into the food processor and toss in the butter. Before you start the processor, use a knife to stir the mixture so every cube of butter is covered in flour.

Give two short pulses of about 1 second, then add half the water, pulse again for 3 short pulses, then add the rest of the water and pulse 6 times.

Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured work surface. Don’t be alarmed if you think the dough is too crumbly; it’s supposed to be that way.

Pat the dough into a sausage, then use a rolling pin to flatten it out to a rectangle. The dough should be quite rough and very marbled with butter. If it is barely holding together at the edges, this is normal.

Fold the right side of the rectangle to the middle and then do the same with the left side of the pastry. Flatten the dough slightly with the rolling pin, then fold up the bottom third of the dough, followed by the top third, to make a small square of dough.

Again, flatten the dough slightly, wrap in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Roll out when needed and proceed as instructed in the recipe.