What makes puff pastry puff

Short pastry is used to make meat and other savoury pies. Short sweet pastry with added sugar, and sometimes eggs, is used to make fruit pies, Christmas mince pies and other sweet recipes for desserts. Suet pastry is used as a delicious cover on stew. Puff pastry is light, flaky and tender. It is made by mixing flour, salt, a little fat and water to form a dough. The dough is then layered with fat, preferably butter, to form hundreds of layers of fat and dough by folding and rolling.

When it is baked, water from the dough turns into steam and puffs up the pastry to produce lots of flaky layers. Flaky pastry is made in the same way but has less rolling and folding and is quicker to make. Puff pastry is used for pies and vol-au-vents and can be filled with meat or fruit and spices. This is a French speciality used for cream buns, chocolate eclairs and profiteroles. The feather-light pastry surrounds a large cavity which is filled with cream.

This mixture is then beaten and eggs are added. The mixture is put in a forcing bag, and placed as rounds or lengths on a baking tray before being baked in a hot oven. When cool, the pastry is pierced to let out the steam. The pastry is often cut and filled with cream. It is delicious when filled with cream flavoured with essence — orange, coffee, caramel or chocolate. Chocolate can be used as icing. Leaved pastries are traditionally found in many parts of the world — Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East and China.

All leaved pastries apart from puff pastry are made from a sheet of dough that is as thin as tissue paper — so thin you can read through it.

Traditionally, the dough is made by hand by gently rolling, stretching or pressing it into very thin sheets. Now we can buy it ready made. In New Zealand it is sold as filo or phyllo pastry. Before baking, the dough is brushed with butter or oil. It is then used in different ways depending on the recipe.

It can be cut into sheets and layered in a tin, cut to make individual rolls or rolled up as one large roll. The pastry is filled with all sorts of delicious fillings — either sweet or savoury — for entrees, mains or desserts. These can include fruit, nuts and honey, meat or cheese and spinach.

Popular recipes are traditional strudel from Austria, baklava from the Mediterranean, borek from the Middle East and spring rolls from China. Puff pastry is a light, flaky and tender pastry made by mixing flour, water and salt into a dough and adding layers of fat. It is used to make pies, pasties, vol au vents, savouries and desserts.

There are many ways of making puff pastry. The aim is to produce a paste with many alternating layers of dough and fat which rise and form a layered pastry when baked.

Specialist bakers and pastry cooks have their own way of making puff pastry. They use different proportions of butter and flour, and differ in the way they incorporate the butter and the number and type of folds they make to the pastry. Yeasted pastries are light flaky pastries that are crisp on the outside, but soft and tender on the inside. The dough, which has yeast added, is layered with fat, so this pastry is a cross between bread and pastry. Examples of yeasted pastries include croissants and Danish pastries.

Croissants are made in a horseshoe shape, and are traditionally eaten warm filled with butter and jam for breakfast. Yeasted pastries are a delicious product that originated in Europe, where they are traditionally eaten in the morning freshly baked and still warm.

They are a cross between bread and puff pastry and so they should be crisp on the outside, like puff pastry, and soft and tender inside, like bread, and should melt in your mouth, leaving no aftertaste. Two types of yeasted pastries are commonly eaten in New Zealand: Danish pastries and croissants.

However, in New Zealand we eat them any time of the day with all sorts of fillings. Danish pastries are found in all sorts of shapes, such as swirls and figures of eight. They are always sweet and can have a filling, such as custard, and icing on top, making a delicious snack or dessert. Croissants are thought to have originated in Austria. In when the Turks were secretly digging tunnels under Vienna to make a surprise attack on the city they were heard by the bakers working early in the morning.

The bakers who raised the alarm and saving Vienna from being defeated by the Turks, then baked a special commemorative roll in the shape of the crescent on the Turkish flag. Marie Antoinette, a French princess, introduced the roll to France where it became known as the croissant, the French word for crescent. Over the years the croissant developed into the product we know today.

Because croissants are time-consuming and expensive to produce by hand, they were not widely eaten. Recently new technologies have been developed that allow less expensive, efficient, mass production of this delicious cereal product.

Croissants are made from a sweet yeasted paste unbaked pastry layered with fat. Nowadays they are eaten at any time of the day and can be filled with all sorts of delicious savoury or sweet fillings. They may also be pre-filled with delicious fillings such as chocolate, fruit or almond paste.

Little is known about the history of Danish pastries. They are popular throughout Europe and the USA. In different countries they have different names: the Danish call them Wienerbrod Vienna bread, after the Austrian capital and the Austrians call them Kopenhagener Copenhagen, after the Danish capital.

They were introduced to America by bakers from Denmark. Like croissants, Danish pastries are made from yeast-leavened sweet dough layered with butter or margarine. They are not kneaded for as long as croissants so they will have a softer mouthfeel and will be more tender. Yeasted pastries are a cross between puff pastry and bread so a combination of techniques used for both bread and pastry making are involved in their production. To make high quality yeasted pastries it is important to understand the effects of ingredients on the quality of the final products.

Information about the functions of ingredients can be found in the bread and puff pastry information sheets. First, a dough is made with yeast in the same way as bread dough is prepared. See more puff pastry recipes 7. By The Hairy Bikers. See more plain flour recipes How to make puff pastry. Preparation time hours. Cooking time 10 to 30 mins. Dietary Vegetarian. By Marcus Bean. Share Share this with.

Print recipe. Recipe tips. Method Sift the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl, then put the bowl in the fridge for a few minutes to chill.

You can bake Puff Pastry on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. For a more even rise, place a sheet of parchment paper on top of your pastry as well. How to tell if Puff Pastry is done baking? Take a sharp knife and nick off a teensy piece to test for crispness and flakiness. Skip to content Always preheat your oven for a minimum of minutes before baking, because Puff Pastry depends on even heat to rise and puff.