Rough puff pastry

The end of Puff Pastry Month is rapidly approaching and I’m running out of time to try out all the recipe ideas that are buzzing round my head. Although I’ve spent most of January trying to persuade you all that puff pasty is never too much trouble to make, even I have to recognise that sometimes there really aren’t enough hours in the day.


Rough puff is the slightly cheaty route to puff pastry; full on cheating would be to go out and buy a packet of the stuff, but where’s the fun in that? And this version is actually surprisingly fun and satisfying to make. It comes together in no time at all as you do the repeated rolling and folding stages in one go, without the need to put it into the fridge to rest between every second turn. I made this batch in about 45 minutes which included time spent stopping to take photos. It then just needs to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes and its ready to go.


The only slight drawback with rough puff is that it won’t rise up as much as traditional puff pastry, and is prone to being more uneven. But I think that for things like pies, the rustic/homemade look is actually preferably to a perfectly uniform pastry top, which tends to remind me of mass-produced ready-meal rubbish. And need I mention again the wonderful buttery flavour of proper homemade pastry? I thought not…



Things I’ve learnt from making rough puff pastry:

As with regular puff pastry, it’s best if you keep the edges of the dough nice and square when rolling and folding, as it helps to keep the layers even. I did not with this batch, mostly because I was chatting to my friend who’d dropped by and taking photos, so generally not paying attention!

Dont try to make a double batch by the food processor method, if it’s the same type as mine it won’t be able to cut up the butter properly and will start to smell like burning, so I would advise sticking to the mixing bowl and knife method if you need more than this amount.

I’ve found that different recipes suggest different numbers of turns for rough puff. I did 6 turns because I like doing it, but if you’re pressed for time 4 would be fine too.

Rough puff pastry: makes around 600g of pastry
(adapted from the British Larder recipe)

250g plain flour
a pinch of salt
125ml cold water
250g salted butter, chilled

• Put the flour and salt into the bowl of a food processor and whiz briefly to combine
• Cut the butter into thickish slices and add to the flour
• Pulse the mixture until the butter is chopped up and mixed throughout the flour. Do not over-mix, you should be able to still see lumps of butter around 1cm in size
• Pour the water into this mixture and pulse until it just starts coming together
• Tip it out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead briefly until combined

Alternatively, if you don’t have a food processor you can use the following method instead:

• Put the flour, salt and butter (chopped into 2cm cubes) into a large bowl and mix together briefly with your hands
• Begin to cut up the butter into smaller pieces by drawing a sharp knife through the flour towards you, turning the bowl as you go
• Continue this process until you have small lumps of butter distributed throughout the flour
• Add the water and knead briefly until it just starts coming together to form a dough

 

• Roll the dough out to form a long rectangle
• Fold the dough into thirds like a letter, then turn the dough by 90°
• Repeat this process a further 5 times, so you have completed six turns in total
• Place the dough in the fridge and leave to rest for 30 minutes or up to 3 days
• At this stage you can also divide the dough into portions and freeze those you don’t need immediately