Rough Puff Pastry Masterclass

The weather was pretty poor today - miserable with a nasty cold wind. So Mum decided to give me a "Rough Puff" pastry masterclass. You always hear TV chefs saying that they would never make puff pastry - too much faffing about - and far easier just to buy the all butter stuff from the shops. I always subscribed to this theory but in the back of my mind I've known that my Mum has always made her own puff pastry. And she's not really a lady that would bother with something that took forever. Her secret?  Rough Puff! Marjan says that she would never bother to make proper puff pastry - personally I don't know the difference but this version was certainly really fast to make.


Here's how you do it:


Ingredients:


70 - 100g cold butter
100g flour
Pinch of salt
Water to bind


Basically its all about the ratio of butter to flour. You can just increase this recipe proportionately using a ratio of 0.7-1 : 1, butter:flour, respectively. We used 90g butter with 100g flour. It made a small amount - enough for the top of a pie - but you'd need to double it if you wanted to do a base too.


Method:


Divde the total amount of butter into four. Put the flour in a food processor with a pinch of salt and cube in the first quarter of your butter. Blitz until you have a breadcrumb texture (like scones). Slowly add water and process until it comes together into a ball (just a teeny tiny bit of water).


Turn out onto a floured bench. Roll your pastry out, pushing the rolling pin in the direction straight ahead of you into a long oblong shape. Dust with more flour to stop it sticking to the rolling pin / bench as required.


Once you have rolled it out take your second quarter of butter and chop small pieces of butter over 2/3 of your pastry oblong. 


Fold the pastry into thirds; fold the 1/3 without any butter into the centre first, then fold over the other end


Give your pastry a quarter turn


Roll out into another long oblong. At this stage you can probably see yellow dots in your pastry where the pieces of butter were. Continue to fold into thirds, give a quarter turn, then roll again until you can't see any more yellow patches and it looks nice and evenly incorporated. For us, this only took about two or three goes.


Once the butter is nicely incorporated, roll out again and chop the third quarter of butter over two thirds of your pastry oblong. Roll and turn a couple of times until evenly incorporated as above.


Rest the pastry for 30mins (longer is fine) in the fridge. This first rest is because the pastry becomes quite difficult to work with otherwise. Marjan says you must have both rests!


Then roll into an oblong and incorporate the final quarter of your butter as above.


Rest pastry in fridge until needed.


The whole process took us about 20 minutes (plus resting). It was easy rolling out. Each long oblong was probably about the thickness of a $1 coin - or as if you were rolling out the pastry to cook with I suppose. Easy peasy.


We used the pastry to make a pear tarte tartin which we ate for dessert after our steak bearnaise (Marjan made the bearnaise sauce). Oui oui! 

Pear Tarte Tartin

The photo is terrible but the tarte was great - and pastry was perfect. I've promised myself that I will never buy shop bought pastry again. This really was too easy. The only thing you need to do is have a little bit of forward planning. Marjan says it's best to knock out your pastry in the morning when the kitchen is nice and cold. Also, what's great is that you can make exactly the amount you need - as Marjan points out - pastry doesn't keep well in the fridge!