The Thousand and One Layers
Among the bases of pastry making, PUFF PASTRY certainly holds a place of its own
Friends of Erre4m, welcome to this new post. Today we will talk about one of the bases of pastry making, but also one of the most complex to prepare: PUFF PASTRY.
Puff pastry is one of the six load-bearing pillars that form the bases of pastry making, and compared with its sisters it has very ancient origins. Historical sources trace the birth of this product all the way back to the Egyptians.
Greeks, Romans and Egyptians prepared dishes made of layers of wafer-thin stretched dough brushed with olive oil. The ancient Greeks also made little flaky pastries to serve alongside wine at the end of a meal. But then, as we know, the origin of food preparations is a continuous succession of evolutions and adaptations over time.
The most up-to-date example of the ancient puff pastry is BAKLAVA, a traditional Turkish sweet made by layering many sheets of paper-thin stretched dough, buttered one on top of the other and filled with pieces of sugared dried fruit flavoured with lemon juice and spices.
Modern puff pastry, used today in pastry shops all over the world, is the work of the chef Pierre de La Varenne, who lived in the 1600s.
Varenne worked at the court of Maria de' Medici, where he learned the secrets of Renaissance and medieval Italian cuisine. He devised a new and ingenious method for preparing the sfogliata (as it was then called), which consisted of enclosing the butter within the dough by means of a series of "turns".
And you may be wondering: what exactly are the turns that de La Varenne speaks of? Before tackling this central subject, let us look at its main characteristic.
Puff pastry is a crumbly, fragrant product. These characteristics are due to the very few ingredients that make it up (flour, water, salt and a fat) and, above all, to the method of preparation. Many layers of dough alternating with just as many thin layers of olive oil or butter allow the sheets of dough to bake separately, which is what gives the product its crispness, while the moisture in the mixture allows it to puff up and become fragrant.
Chef Varenne's extraordinary insight was to shorten the production process by enclosing the fat inside the dough: he placed, directly inside the pastry détrempe, a butter block of butter. To this "block" of détrempe and butter block, de La Varenne gave the famous turns (a term still used in pastry manuals): that is, six times over he stretched the dough out and folded it back on itself. This ingenious operation created many layers of dough and fat, just as in the ancient version, but it could also perfect the development and quality of the product.
The ingredients that make up the puff pastry perfected by Varenne (and known today as classic puff pastry) are four: flour, water, salt and butter.
An important detail in the recipe for classic puff pastry requires the ratio of flour to fat always to be equal; therefore, 1 kg of flour is matched by 1 kg of butter.
Let us look at the recipe together:
700 g flour
360 g water (to soften the dough)
20 g salt, kneaded together, form a soft dough called the DÉTREMPE.
Meanwhile
1 kg butter
300 g flour (which make the butter more pliable) form the BUTTER BLOCK.
Butter block and détrempe are assembled together to form a single "block".
The détrempe, once kneaded and rested, is rolled out, and in its centre is laid the butter block which, after mixing, has been given a square shape. The rolled-out détrempe, larger than the butter block, will cover the latter completely.
The two mixtures form the "block"; at this point, following Varenne's instructions, you begin to roll the block out, stretching it and folding it back on itself to create the layers.
Before concluding this post, let us look together at the characteristics that the ingredients of the détrempe and the butter block must have:
- FLOUR: since puff pastry is a very elaborate product, it calls for the use of strong flours. The repeated stretching and folding of the dough places considerable stress on the gluten proteins; a flour that is poor in gluten will therefore leave the détrempe unable to withstand the continual stretching, and consequently the layers of dough and butter will fail to form. A moderately strong, elastic flour with W 300 is used, then, capable of guaranteeing the right resistance and elasticity of the détrempe and the butter block.
- BUTTER: this is precisely the ingredient that enables the physical rising of the puff pastry. The fats in the butter generate incomparable aromas and flavours. Butter also gives the puff pastry its crumbliness and taste. The drawback of butter is that it has a very low smoke point (28–33 °C), which makes it difficult to use in preparing puff pastry. Indeed, puff pastries made with butter must be left to cool between one turn and the next.
- WATER: together with the fat, water is the ingredient that triggers the physical rising of the puff pastry. Indeed, the water for preparing the détrempe must always be COLD, to ensure rapid cooling. Let us remember that the détrempe will come into contact with the butter, and butter has a very low melting point. Another crucial detail is this: the water must be in the right quantity to obtain a détrempe of the same consistency as the butter block, so as to achieve perfect layering.
- SALT: it has never been stated, but puff pastry is not a sweet base… it is savoury! And it is precisely this feature that makes it suitable for both sweet and savoury preparations. The salt, however, does not only serve to make the puff pastry mainly savoury, but also to strengthen the gluten network and to colour the product during baking.
We will take the recipe for classic puff pastry as given; for the method and the little secrets for preparing an excellent "sfogliata", I refer you to the next post.
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Blog by Enrico Gumirato, pastry chef and trainer
