An Uneducated Palate

Paris is a food lover’s paradise. Especially if the food lover also happens to have a sweet tooth. There are patisseries and boulangeries on almost every street corner, all offering a gorgeous array of delightful treats. The breakfasts pastries are my favourite. Croissants, pain au chocolat, palmiers, and luscious fruit tarts. Is there anything better than the light buttery taste of perfectly golden puff pastry?

The list of ingredients to make puff pastry is actually very short – flour, salt, water and butter. Developing the dough, however, involves a lesson in origami. Once you’ve mixed the four ingredients together, you let the dough rest for at least 12 hours in the refrigerator. Next comes the process of making turns. The technique I learned at the École Ritz Escoffier goes something like this:

1. Roll dough out into a large cross shape
2. Place a big square of softened butter in the centre of the cross
3. Fold two opposite parts of the cross up over the butter towards the centre
4. Fold the remaining two flaps up and over the butter
5. This will make an envelope that completely encloses the butter
6. Roll out the dough again until it forms a rectangle 3x longer than it is wide
7. Fold the dough in thirds by folding the top third of the dough down, then the bottom third up
8. Repeat steps 6 and 7
9. Square off the dough – this completes one full turn
10. Repeat steps 1 – 9
11. Put dough in the refrigerator for one hour
12. Repeat steps 1 – 9 twice
13. Put back in the refrigerator for another hour
14. Repeat steps 1 – 9 two more times – you should now have completed 6 full turns
15. Put back in the refrigerator for half an hour
16. Roll out the dough, cut it and bake it according to the recipe you’ve chosen

Confused yet? I know I am. Here are a few suggestions that might help you keep track of your turns:

• When you square off the dough at the end of the turn, always end with the folded edge on the left.  That way when you start your next turn, you can open it up like a book.
• At the end of each turn, make a thumb print in the dough.

Of course there is an easier way. You can always buy frozen puff pastry at the grocery store, but make sure you buy one that has real butter.  (I buy President’s Choice Butter Puff Pastry.)

I’ve used store-bought puff pastry three times. Once for a dinner party where I served Anna Olson’s Tomato Basil Tarts as a starter, last week when I made a modified version of Le Cordon Bleu’s Puff Pastry Apple Tart, and last night when I made an amazing Banana Tarte Tatin from Bon Appétit’s Home Entertaining issue.

It might be fun to do a blind taste test with two desserts – one made with frozen puff pastry and the other from scratch. I bet it would take a very discerning palate to distinguish between the two. A Parisian pastry chef might be able to tell them apart, but I doubt that any of my dinner guests could. What do you think? Could you tell frozen from scratch?

Related articles

• “The Versatile Tart” – A Story of How Puff Pastry Saved Dinner (thingsimloving.com)