31 Puff Puff Pastry Recipes You'll Wanna Pass Around (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to puff pastry? ›

Always preheat your oven for a minimum of 15-20 minutes before baking, because Puff Pastry depends on even heat to rise and puff. Place pastries 1 inch apart. If you want a flaky thin and crispy pastry that's not very puffy, prick the unbaked Puff Pastry all over with a fork, which lets steam escape while baking.

Bake the pastries at 375°F until done: Lower the oven temperature and continue baking until the pastries are dry, crisp, and deep golden-brown. Cool and serve: Let the pastries cool slightly, then serve. Or if you're filling them after baking, let them cool completely, then fill and serve.

Puff pastry, also known as pâte feuilletée, is a flaky light pastry made from a laminated dough composed of dough (détrempe) and butter or other solid fat (beurrage). The butter is put inside the dough (or vice versa), making a paton that is repeatedly folded and rolled out before baking.

We are Team Egg Wash (or Cream Wash). While melted butter adds more flavor than the washes, it is less effective in look; it gives a speckled appearance to pastry.

Milk is too runny and will burn but you can add a little to your egg wash to make it a little thinner for coating. Melted butter also burns quite quickly. Egg wash is the most reliable because it coats the pastry evenly and doesn't run off.

When making a pie with a pastry top or lid, choose a dish with a rim and allow the filling to get cold before topping with pastry. Roll out pastry large enough to cover dish and with some spare.

My baked pastry is tough.

It usually occurs when you've been a bit heavy-handed with the water when you're initially bringing the pastry together (by adding water to the flour and butter), or if you have over-worked the dough and developed the gluten in the flour.

It might sound a little strange using puff pastry for the base of the pie (since all the puffiness is going to be squashed down with pie filling), but it works, and it saves the effort of using a different type of pastry for the base.

Puff pastry is a laminated dough that gets its signature airy puff from layers of butter, while phyllo dough is comparatively low-fat. Phyllo dough is mostly flour and water and can dry out easily. The fine sheets of pastry dough create a crispy, crackly effect when layered and baked.

As the pastry bakes water boils off as steam from the gluten in the dough layers and goes into the fat layers. As water turns into steam it expands, making large bubbles between the layers of dough. This inflates the pastry and it becomes about eight times higher.

What temperature do you bake puff pastry? ›

Always bake Puff Pastry Shells in a preheated 425° F oven. Bake Puff Pastry Cups in a preheated 400° F oven for 20 minutes. Do not bake either Shells or Cups in a microwave or toaster oven. See our Tips & Techniques page for more baking tips for Puff Pastry Sheets, Shells and Cups.

The verdict: It's certainly cheaper to make your own pastry and I like the fact that most times, I'll have the ingredients to hand, no need for a special trip to the shops.

Shortcrust pastry: Shortcrust pastry is a type of pastry made from flour, butter, and water. It is commonly used for sweet desserts but can also be used as a substitute for puff pastry in savory dishes like pot pies. Shortcrust pastry has a crumbly texture and provides a sturdy base for the filling [1].

While all-purpose flour is fine and can be used successfully for homemade puff pastry, we recommend using strong bread flour like this for best results. Bread flour has a higher protein content than all-purpose flour, and therefore, contains more gluten.

Temperature is a key factor in baking up puff pasty that actually puffs. Set the oven dial too low, and the pastry is likely to fall flat. Follow this tip: As a rule of thumb, a higher oven temperature (400°F is ideal) results in puff pastry with a higher rise.

The secret is steam and hundreds of paper-thin layers of dough. Puff pastry starts out as a lean dough of just water and flour. This dough gets rolled, stretched, and folded with a healthy amount of butter again and again until all of those layers are formed.

One way to prevent soggy bottom pastry is to blind bake the pastry – This means partially or completely bake the pastry before adding the filling. Also, avoid over-filling your pastry.