Puff Pastry Recipe!

 I recently learned how to make puff pastry when I made the Egyptian dessert, Umm Ali. I was very intimidated by the prospect, but it turned out to be much simpler that I expected. 

 Puff Pastry is laminated by many letter folds like croissant rolls, but unlike croissant rolls it is not leavened. It can be used as a pie crust or in fancier pastries. I am tempted to use puff pastry in all my pies from now on. I probably won't, but the puff pastry is SO much better!

I followed the recipe from the kitchen.com. They have really nice pictures of the steps over on their site that helped me understand how simple the process was.

This recipe makes one sheet of puff pastry. I think 2 sheets come in a package, but these may be larger than the packaged sheets, I can't speak to that.

Puff Pastry 

2 cups Flour 

1 tsp. Salt

2/3 cup Ice Cold Water

1/2 cup (1 stick) Butter 

Mix the flour and salt together.

Slowly sprinkle in the water while stirring.

Form a ball with the dough: flatten out and put in an airtight bag and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

In the meantime, make the butter malleable by taking cold butter, cutting it into large chunks, sprinkling with flour, putting it between two layers of wax paper and beating it with a rolling pin. Form the butter into a 4 inch square. The butter needs to be cool but not cold. Depending on your room temperature, you may need to chill it for 10 minutes before you seal it in the dough.

Encase the butter in the dough. On a floured surface roll the dough into a rectangle. Fold in thirds in the manner of a letter fold. Roll out again and fold once more. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Pull the dough out of the fridge and roll out and fold and roll out and fold again. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Pull the dough out of the fridge and roll out and fold and roll out and fold again. Refrigerate for 1 hour or overnight.

Roll out to 1/4" to 1/8" thick. cut into squares or diamonds and bake at 425° for 15 minutes unless you have a particular recipe that you are using the Puff Pastry in, then follow those recipe instructions.