HOW DO THE LAYERS CREATE THE FLAKINESS?
Layering the butter and dough traps the water in the pastry, which evaporates as steam during cooking, but can’t escape. It’s this steam that makes each layer of pastry swell up.
WHAT DOES THE VINEGAR DO?
It makes the pastry slightly acidic, which helps it keep for longer.
WHY DOES THE DOUGH HAVE TO BE RESTED?
When the water is mixed with the flour, it makes the starch grains swell up. The added butter slips between the swollen starch grains, and the flour proteins form a gluten network. During the resting time, this gluten network – which becomes very stretched when the pastry is worked – will relax and give the pastry a less firm texture.
MAKES 560 G
1 DOUGH
120 g water
10 g white vinegar
5 g salt
30 g unsalted butter, melted
250 g (1⅔ cups) plain flour
2 FOR TURNING
150 g unsalted butter
1 To make the dough, mix the water, vinegar, salt, butter and flour in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment. Mix at low speed until the mixture is smooth. Roll into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
2 Put the butter between two sheets of baking paper. Tap lightly with a rolling pin to make a 10 cm square about 1 cm thick. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
3 Rest the dough at room temperature for 30 minutes. Roll it out into a cross-like flattened diamond shape, leaving it slightly thicker in the centre.
4 Place the butter in the middle. Rest for a few minutes at room temperature, then fold the four corners into the middle, taking care to maintain the same thickness all over. The butter should be firmly enclosed in the dough.
5 Roll the pastry out away from you, as evenly as possible, into a rectangle measuring about 30 cm × 15 cm.
6 Fold the pastry into a ‘wallet’: fold the bottom third towards the middle, then fold the top third over it. Then make an anti-clockwise quarter (90-degree) turn with the folded pastry (with the seam at the right). You have made the first simple turn.
7 To make the second turn, roll out the pastry away from you.
8 Fold it into a wallet again and make an anticlockwise quarter turn. Wrap in plastic wrap and rest in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours, ideally overnight.
9 Make two more simple turns, then rest in the refrigerator for a further 3–4 hours. Make one or, at most, two more turns before using. You can create gentle indentations with your fingers to indicate the number of turns you have completed.
