Puff Pastry PSA

Another pastry class from a Cleveland legend.  Pics below of Parker Bosley making puff pastry followed by written instructions from the session along with a classic pastry cream recipe.

That's 250 grams of each flour and butter, 125 grams of water, and 4 grams salt being chopped together with a dough scraper

Shape into a nice rectangle.  It's okay if it's a little crumbly.  Clumps of butter are fine and even desirable.

Flour and roll.  

Fold like a tri-fold business letter with opening to the right.   It may take 2 or 3 roll/foldings at this stage to get it to hold together well.

It doesn't have to look perfect after the first roll out (which may take the aforementioned 2 or 3 rollings and foldings), but it should hold together well and the rectangle shape should be pretty spot on. We've now completed the first turn.

Repeat the rectangle roll out, starting from the middle and then working up or down--not going back and forth.  Keep the edges as straight as possible. Flour as necessary.

Above Parker's starting to fold after rolling.  This is part of the second turn.

That's the tri-fold.  The opening is always on the right.    This completed the second turn and the dough goes into the fridge for at least and hour.

Now the dough has rested and is being rolled out for the third turn.  After it's rolled it will be tri-folded again.

After folding the dough is rolled out again and folded to complete the fourth turn.

After the fourth turn the dough is indented so you remember how many times it's been turned (those are two indents above--my pics got out of order, imagine there are four dots).  Now the dough could rest in the fridge overnight, and the next time it comes out it's taken for two more turns.  The puff pastry calls for a total of six turns.

After the pastry has completed six turns it's left to rest in the fridge.  The only remaining step is to use the dough as called for.  For the squares above, the rested dough was quartered and rolled out into a rectangle.  The rectangle was cut (with a sharp knife--no pastry cutter or tearing here) into four equal sized squares.  So this recipe yields a total of 16 puff pastry squares that can be kept frozen until needed.

Here's the recipe and instructions as recorded by Virginia Houston, Cleveland transplant extraordinaire.

 

That's Parker and Virg working away.

What to do with all this stuff?  Below is one savory option.

Puff pastry with shrimp, scallop, and shellfish cream sauce

We also filled the pastries with sauteed apples and pastry cream.  Super good.  Parker recommended hollowing out the cooked puffs and stuffing them with soft scrambled eggs as a sure way to woo an overnight guest the morning after.  Will have to take his word for it.

Enjoy.