Generality
There puff pastry it is a basic pastry preparation, used for many sweet or savory recipes; the most well-known foods based on puff pastry are: pretzels, savory pies, sweet cakes, "salty bar pastas" (like amberjack), "sweet bar pastas" (stuffed or not, like "cannoncino", "trecce" etc. .) etc.
Puff pastry is considered a typically French food, even if its origins strongly recall the Central-Mediterranean diet. Obviously, the ancient recipe was different from the contemporary one: while the modern puff pastry is prepared with water, flour, salt and butter, the first recipe (probably Egyptian and then Greek) involved the use of olive oil. However, both the archaic and the modern formula require a high use of seasoning fats which, combined with the complex carbohydrates of flour, structure the caloric power of the puff pastry.
Characteristics of the ingredients and precautions
The ingredients of the puff pastry are essentially 4: wheat flour, butter, water and salt.
The puff pastry is to be considered an "instant" leavening dough, therefore by means of cooking. This is NOT due to the presence of microbiological starters (such as brewer's yeast, sourdough, etc.), nor to sodium bicarbonate, ammonium bicarbonate or chemical yeast, but to the chemical-physical modification of water, proteins and gases. present in the dough. It is also essential to remember that the instant leavening of puff pastry depends in an essential way on the kneading process (bending); an error in handling inevitably compromises the success of the final product. For the same reason, the scraps of puff pastry should NOT be reshuffled as you could do with those of bread or pasta.
INGREDIANTS
- Wheat flour: it must be type 00 and have a "medium" strength, about 230 W. It is "the same used for" soft pasta "(Apulian, Ciabatta, French bread making)," for hard pasta "(Ferrarese couple) or for the refreshment of the sourdough / sourdough.
By decreasing the strength of the flour for the puff pastry, it is possible to obtain greater friability, less flaking and less heaviness of the finished product; on the contrary, with a stronger flour a very flaky product is obtained, light but with low friability due to the greater absorption of water by gluten. - For water there are no particular indications, except to use it as a diluent for the salt. It has the function of softening the pastel (later we will see what it is), favor the layering of the puff pastry and homogenize the salty flavor.
- The butter is generally white and made from cow's milk. Variants such as Norman butter or other types are not excluded, as long as you keep in mind that some of them have a very different flavor and taste. Better to avoid margarine, it has a less valuable taste and a metabolic impact almost identical to butter (there is no reason to prefer it, if not a lower cost).
- As with butter, even salt does not require special attention. The fine and common one is fine; obviously, using an integral and / or iodine-fortified sea salt would give greater nutritional value to the puff pastry. The recommended portion of salt is about 20g / kg of flour.
- Some people supplement the water with a little lemon juice to reduce the fatness of the puff pastry.
Method
The procedure for the production of puff pastry requires, first of all, the formation of two doughs: one of water, salt and flour, called pastel; the other of only butter and flour, to form a loaf. ATTENTION! For an optimal result it is necessary that: the ingredients (especially the water and the butter), the tools and possibly also the working environment are absolutely COLD.
Pastel can be produced in three different ways:
- kneading it a little, speeding up the times and increasing the peeling capacity (however irregular) of the dough;
- mixing it a lot, obtaining greater regularity and less flaking (this is due to the fact that gluten, when it is cooked, is already under tension and resists the pressure of the vapors);
- fat pastel, firmer than lean and which does not require subsequent incorporation of the other ingredients.
The stick of butter and flour must be made from very cold butter, then just taken out of the refrigerator. This is then beaten with a rolling pin, to make it more manageable, and integrated with the flour (the latter, in a proportion of 30% compared to the butter). Then the modeling takes place, to form a parallelepiped about 1 cm high, which will then rest in the refrigerator for at least an hour. NB. On the market there is also a type of butter already integrated with said flour platte.
Let's now pass to the "kneading of the dough, that is the essential procedure for a correct" dough ". First, the pastel is thinly spread with a rolling pin to form a square. In the center, the butter and flour stick is then placed; then the whole is closed by joining the surplus ears of the pastel "in a package". It is smoothed out with a rolling pin to obtain a thin sheet that will rest in the fridge for about 15 ". Then a series of bends (or turns) will be made to be carried out methodically and for a well-defined number of times. To better understand how to carry out these folds, I suggest you consult Alice's video recipe: Puff pastry - Recipe to prepare it at home; generally, the folding takes place in the following ways: 4 by 4, 5 by 3 or 6 by 3. ATTENTION! For an optimal result it would be advisable to let the dough rest for 15 "after each fold.
Easy Puff Pastry
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I remind our kind readers that the outcome (potential of puff pastry) depends on both the number and the thickness of the folds. The high folds favor the increase in the thickness of the cooked dough, while the low ones determine the opposite result.
Cooking
As anticipated, the growth of the dough during cooking is caused by the evaporation of the water contained in the butter and in the pastel which, finding a gluten network to block its escape and an impermeable layer of lipids, swell more or less uniformly. Therefore, one of the secrets for the preparation of puff pastry is the care in the layering of the dough. Each fold must be well tightened and must NOT have holes or tears; otherwise, an escape route would be created for the gases which would cause irregularities or large bubbles in the product. Also, depending on the strength of the flour used and the level of handling of the pastel, the puff pastry will need to be left to rest for a longer or shorter time before cooking. This allows to activate the gluten better BUT also to allow it to lose a good part of the so-called "nerve"; in practice, by letting the dough rest it is possible to "relax" the gluten and allow a greater swelling of the finished product.
Nutritional values (per 100 g of edible portion)
To cook puff pastry, keep in mind that, as it is rich in water, it requires cooking times longer than you might think; nevertheless, it is also a dough that chars quite quickly. Times and temperatures they cannot be uniformed; they mainly depend on the thickness, the size and the possible perforation of the puff pastry, which are in turn juxtaposed according to the specific recipe. Generally, temperatures of 220-230 ° C are used ONLY for thin bases, with holes, and pretzels, while for thicker doughs a heat of 160-180 ° C is required. The ideal color for NON-brushed puff pastry is dark blond, lighter where it rests on the plate (possibly replaceable with a grid) but always crumbly.
Other variations
In principle, if the puff pastry is intended for the production of cakes and vol-au-vent, it is advisable to obtain a mixture of flour and butter in equal measure (200g + 200g), salt and 1 EGG.
For pizzas and pretzels, how not to mention the famous French puff pastry, which uses 300g of "0" flour, 200g of butter, 100g of water and salt.
Lastly, because it is less known but still interesting, the English puff pastry. It is made with 250g of STRONG flour, 250g of butter, 100g of water and ½ tablespoon of lemon juice; the procedure is almost totally different from the other. This is obtained with a fat pastel, spread and enriched with the remaining butter in flakes, then folded in 3 twice.
Nutritional characteristics
Puff pastry is a food made from wheat flour, water and butter. The energy intake is very high, mainly conferred by: the complex carbohydrates of the flour and the triglycerides of the butter. It is therefore deductible that the puff pastry is not a usable food in the low-calorie diet against overweight.
Fatty acids are mainly of the monounsaturated type, but the saturated fraction is not negligible as well as that of cholesterol; for these two characteristics, the puff pastry does NOT lend itself to diet against hypercholesterolemia.
Proteins are few and of medium biological value; even the fiber content is not appreciable.
From a salt and vitamin point of view, the puff pastry does not boast concentrations worthy of note; mediocre, even if more decisive than the others, is the "contribution of calcium, while the content of equivalent retinol (vitamin A) could be defined as" fair ".
The sodium intake is considerable and undesirable, ESPECIALLY in the diet of those suffering from arterial hypertension.
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