* Note. Colors of pictures are more vivid when clicked on to activate lightbox

Luscious apple tarts!

One evening after the new year, I had an odd compulsion to make puff pastry. It must have been triggered by this arctic blast that had sent people (me) scuttling indoors and despite the furnace running up my heating bill, my fingers remained ice cold. What better time to make puff pastry, right?
Some flour, some butter - okay, lotsa butter, ice water and icy fingers, you get one of the miracles of pastry. Multi-layered sheets of buttery heaven, how can one resist?
The one disadvantage of making puff pastry is the time commitment needed to produce it. It’s almost unheard of for a home cook to make their own and there are certainly store-bought ones that may be passable, but mastering the art of puff pastry is a worthwhile endeavor, I believe. Then again, there is still the time constraint.
Back in July, Helen showed me how to make rough puff pastry and I was amazed with the results. But you know me, curious to the very end, I wanted to compare them side by side.

Saffron, pears and pistachios

I also had some Iranian pistachio that I wanted to use in some dessert. If there are two things Iran is known for, it is for the quality of their pistachio and saffron. I did not have the heart to use it for pistachio paste, after all at 25 euros for 1kg, one must use it wisely. I leafed through “Sweet Seasons” by Richard Leach and found his roasted pear and mascarpone filling. I thought if I infused the cream with saffron, I could use that to fill a millefuielle and then sprinkle some ground roasted pistachios on top. It’ll look pretty...let’s hope the filling holds up.
I also wanted to do a repeat of the peach tart on rough puff pastry but this time use apples which was the original recipe anyway.

A fruit composition

Please excuse the abundance of pictures, I thought since it’s already 2010, I should improve my food photography and it takes patience (by not being too tempted by the dessert before good pictures are taken) and lots of practice (playing with different camera settings.)

This recipe for my regular puff pastry comes from by Bo Friberg. We used it in our Daring Baker’s challenge for the Gateau St. Honore and I found this to be one of the best and problem free puff pastry recipe that I have tried.

Regular puff pastry on its 4th turn

Regular Puff Pastry

Makes about 2 1/2 pounds.

3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface (420 gr)
3/4 cup cake flour (105 gr)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt (7 gr)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces, well chilled (60 gr)
1 1/4 cups cold water (295.5 ml)
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour (14 gr)
1 3/4 cups (3 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, well-chilled (405 gr)

Make the dough package: In a large mixing bowl, combine both flours with the salt. Scatter butter pieces over the flour mixture; using your fingers or a pastry cutter, incorporate butter until mixture resembles coarse meal.
Form a well in center of mixture, and pour the water into well. Using your hands, gradually draw flour mixture over the water, covering and gathering until mixture is well blended and begins to come together. Gently knead mixture in the bowl just until it comes together to form a dough, about 15 seconds. Pat dough into a rough ball, and turn out onto a piece of plastic wrap. Wrap tightly, and place in refrigerator to chill 1 hour.
Make the butter package: Sprinkle 1/2 tablespoon flour on a sheet of waxed or parchment paper. Place uncut sticks of butter on top, and sprinkle with remaining 1/2 tablespoon flour. Top with another sheet of paper; using a rolling pin, pound butter to soften and flatten to about 1/2 inch. Remove top sheet of paper, and fold butter package in half onto itself. Replace top sheet of paper, and pound again until butter is about an inch thick. Repeat process two or three times, or until butter becomes quite pliable. Using your hands, shape butter package into a 6-inch square. Wrap well in plastic wrap, and place in refrigerator until it is chilled but not hardened, no more than 10 minutes.
Assemble and roll the dough: Remove dough package from refrigerator, and place on a lightly floured work surface. Using a rolling pin, gently roll dough into a 9-inch round. Remove butter package from refrigerator, and place it in the center of the dough round. Using a paring knife or bench scraper, lightly score the dough to outline the butter square; remove butter, and set it aside. Starting from each side of the center square, gently roll out dough with the rolling pin, forming four flaps, each 4 to 5 inches long; do not touch the raised square in the center of the dough. Replace butter package on the center square. Fold flaps of dough over the butter package so that it is completely enclosed. Press with your hands to seal.
Using the rolling pin, press down on the dough at regular intervals, repeating and covering the entire surface area, until it is about 1 inch thick. Gently roll out the dough into a large rectangle, about 9 by 20 inches, with one of the short sides closest to you. Be careful not to press too hard around the edges, and keep the corners even as you roll out the dough by squaring them with the side of the rolling pin or your hands. Brush off any excess flour. Starting at the near end, fold the rectangle in thirds as you would a business letter; this completes the first single turn.Wrap in plastic wrap; place in refrigerator 45 to 60 minutes.
Remove dough from refrigerator, and repeat process, giving it five more single turns.Always start with the flap opening on the right as if it were a book. Mark the dough with your knuckle each time you complete a turn to help you keep track. Chill 1 hour between each turn. After the sixth and final turn, wrap dough in plastic wrap; refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight before using.

Rough Puff Pastry
adapted from Michel Roux courtesy of Tartelette


2 1/4 cups (300gr) all purpose flour 


1 1/4 cup (300gr) unsalted butter, cold and cut into 1/4-inch cubes 


1/2 teaspoon (3gr) salt

1/2 cup (125ml) ice-cold water 


Place the flour in a large bowl and make a well in the center. Add the butter and salt right in the well and work them together with the flour, using your fingertips, gradually drawing in more flour into the center. When the butter pieces have reached pea sized pieces and the mixture appears grainy, gradually add the ice water and mix until it is all incorporated. Do not overwork the dough. Roll it into a ball, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate 20 to 30 minutes. 
On a lightly flour work area, roll the dough to an 8×4-inch rectangle. Fold it into three and give it a quarter turn. Roll it into another 8×4-inch rectangle again and fold it in three again. These are the first 2 turns. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate again for 30 minutes.
Give the chilled dough 2 more turns, rolling and folding as previously described. The pastry is ready then. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Roasted Pear and Saffron Mascarpone Filling
adapted from Richard Leach, “Sweet Seasons”
1/2 cup / 118g roasted Pear puree * recipe to follow
1/2 cup / 118 g mascarpone cheese
1/2 cup / 118 g heavy cream
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon saffron threads
Bring the cream to a boil. Turn off the heat, add saffron and let infuse for 20 minutes. Strain the cream and chill.
Combine all ingredients for the filling in an electric mixer bowl and whisk until stiff. Refrigerate until ready to use.

*Roasted Pear Puree
5 Bartlett pears
2 tablespoons/ 30 g clarified butter
1/2 cup/ 118 g honey
4 tablespoons / 58 Per Williams liqueur ( I used rum)
Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
Peel, core and quarter pears. Place a heavy roasting pan n hot oven and heat pan for 10 minutes. Quickly and carefully add the butter and pears. Stir and then roast until nicely browned and tender, 10-15 minutes. Add honey and roast until honey begins to caramelize, an additional 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and deglaze pan with liqueur. Once cooled, puree pears in a food processor until smooth. Set aside.
Prepare puff pastry for millefeuille
Preheat oven to 400 F. Roll out puff pastry to 1/16 inch thick. Cut strips of 2” x 9”. Lay on baking sheet and chill for 10 minutes. Put into the oven and lay a baking sheet on top of it. Bake until the pastry is a blonde color, about 10 minutes. Remove the top baking sheet and continue to bake until golden brown, about 8-10 minutes more
When cool, divide the the 2”x9” sheet horizontally into 2”x4.5”. Pipe the mascarpone filling on one strip and put another on top. Chill for at least 3 hours before serving.

A Great Apple Tart
Adapted from Inn at Little Washington by Patrick O’Connell

2 apples


3 tbs. unsalted butter


1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon


2 tbs. heavy cream


6 tbs. Southern Comfort


1/3 cup sugar combined with 1 rounded tsp. cinnamon

Take out enough puff pastry to roll out to 1/8 inch thick and cut out 6 4-inch circles. (You can refrigerate left-over puff pastry for 3 days or freeze for a month.)Lay on baking sheet lined with parchment, dock each circle 5 times with a fork and refrigerate for at least 1/2 hour.
Cut apples, 1/8 inches thick. In a large saute pan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the apples and cook for several minutes. Add the cinnamon and cream. Carefully add the Southern Comfort, averting your face, as it will ignite. Continue cooking until the apples are soft and pliable. Remove the apples and transfer to a plate and cool in refrigerator. Simmer the cooking liquid until reduced in half, set aside as you will use this to glaze the tarts after they come out of the oven.
Preheat oven to 400F.
Remove pastry rounds from refrigerator. Lay apple slices, slightly overlapping. Dust (a lot) the tarts with cinnamon sugar and bake for about 15-20 minutes until crust is brown. Remove the tarts from the oven and brush with reserved cooking liquid.

On left: regular , on right: rough puff pastry

Comparison of millefeuille innards:

On left: regular, on right: rough puff pastry, the regular puff was underbaked

Puff Pastry Notes
The most annoying thing with making the regular puff pastry was pounding chilled butter into form. I always tore my parchment papers. And then, when I was rummaging through a drawer, I found two silicone mats (silpats). I put my butter sticks between them, pounded them and this worked like a charm. You can use your fingers or a stainless steel scraper to form your butter block. I also found a bench brush effective in removing excess flour.
I found that the layers are more refined in regular puff pastry and ragged in the rough puff pastry version. Both taste just as good and are equally flaky, so depending on your time or level of adventure, either recipe should work specially for simple tarts and millefueille where you don’t want your pastry to rise too much anyway.

The glaze of the apple tart is important

Other notes
To be honest, I was not too happy with my mascarpone filling because it did not get too firm. I think my pears were not caramelized enough and had too much moisture in the puree. The flavor was very promising though and I would try this combination again.
For the apple tart, there was not enough glazing liquid. To increase it, I reserved the peelings and core from the apple and boiled it in a little water and adding a tablespoon of sugar. When all the flavor has been extracted, I added this to the glazing liquid and then whisked and reduced it.
This apple tart remains to be one of my favorite desserts to make at home.

*Come back tomorrow for my entry to mactweets as I tackle Pierre Hermé Italian Meringue macaron once more. I also have for you a delicious macaron filling!

Friday, 5/25/2007

12:00 pm

What is it about making puff pastry that strikes a chord of dread even in the most seasoned baker? Is it because of the time and effort one puts into it? Is it because it could get temperamental and you could potentially waste half a day for nothing? Is it because the store-bought puff pastry might turn out better than your homemade one thereby doing a number on your kitchen confidence. A combination of all the above is what elicited remarks from some of my friends who think I was crazy for wanting to make my own puff pastry. “Why make it, when store-bought is just as good!” Really now.

            This month’s Daring Baker’s challenge is reminiscent of the January croissant baking gauntlet (sounds medieval does it not?) It involves the use of laminated dough, the puff pastry in particular.

            But wait there is more. Aside from making the puff pastry, we have to make pâte â choux to make cream puffs, pipe a diplomat (otherwise known as Bavarian) cream into those little buggers and finish it off with caramel.

“Good Grief!” you might say “What in the world is this pastry?!”

            It is the Gateau Saint Honore, so named after the patron saint of pastry chefs and bakers (I did not know they had a guardian saint.) I hear it is the ultimate test for pastry school students before he/she is allowed to graduate.

Am I crazy? No. I think that honor belongs to Helen and Anita of Tartelette and Desserts First respectively, the joint hosts of this month’s challenge, and the ones wicked enough to cast this gauntlet.  I think they took our group name, Daring Bakers, to the extreme.

Before I proceed further let me explain very briefly a couple of items in this entire process:

            Laminated dough is made up of a dough and a roll-in fat. The dough is made up of flour, water, salt and can be yeasted for croissants or unyeasted for puff pastry. The roll-in fat, sometimes known as the butter block can consist of a little flour or can be totally devoid of it. Personally, I think it is better to have some flour in the butter to help it incorporate better into the dough package.

The lamination process starts when you cover the butter with the dough and start rolling it to a specified length and width. Then you fold it like a business letter or depending on what is called for in your recipe, refrigerate it and repeat the process for a couple of more times. This folding of the dough is called a turn and it is this act that increases the layers of fat and the dough.

Call me geeky but I made a rough computation of the possible layers per turn of a three-fold puff pastry.

For this recipe I am doing 6 turns. There are dough layers and fat layers involved. When I enclosed the butter in the dough I consider this already 2 layers of dough, and 1 layer of fat. After rolling it out and folding it into a business letter fold, I calculate 6 layers of dough and 3 layers of fat. The formula I came up with is simply :

Dough = 2(3 ^n)

Fat = 3^n

where n= number of turns

Turns	Dough layers	Fat layers
1st	6	3
2nd	18	9
3rd	54	27
4th	162	81
5th	486	243
6th	1458	729

            Disclaimer:  I  just wanted to find out how they concluded that a puff pastry is made up of at least a thousand layers. I drew the process on paper and came up with the above formula. I might have overlooked something in my calculations so whoever can correct me, I would greatly appreciate it.

Pâte à choux is the dough used for cream puffs, gougéres, éclairs and profiteroles. It is made by combining water, flour and butter until it becomes a paste. Then you beat some eggs into it until it is thoroughly combined. It creates a hollowed pastry that you can fill with pastry cream.

Diplomat /Bavarian Cream is a basic pastry cream used to fill tarts and cream puffs and is made by heating milk, yolk, flour and sugar until it gets really thick. It is usually further thickened with gelatin or cornstarch.

So now you know the components I can give you a gist of the assembly of the Gateaux Saint Honore. You first form a base with the puff pastry, then you lay circles of pâte à choux on top, apply a layer of cream and then attach the filled cream puffs onto it with caramel. Then you can proceed to further decorate it with spun sugar.

            You might be wondering why am I typing this post ahead of time before making this month’s challenge. Just in case you all don’t hear from me again after this weekend and I have gone into seclusion after swearing off all flour and butter, I thought I could leave some sort of explanation regarding my disappearance before I lose all sense of coherence.

            Kidding aside, I am so pumped up for this challenge! I’m making the puff pastry tonight (I like to give myself some time allowance just in case I mess up.)

         6:00 pm

            Scene: Veronica pounding the butter into submission with a rolling pin

                        “Come on my little pretty yellow……… da** it flatten already!”

          7:00 pm

            Scene: Veronica rolling out the package for the first time

                        “Hmmn… it did say 9X … Crap ! where did the instructions go?”

Finding it in the pantry…” Hmmn…don’t remember how it got there. 9x 20 inches. Now where is that  measuring tape!”

          9:45 pm

Scene: Veronica stirring pastry cream furiously over stovetop . “This thing is not thickening at all, maybe I need to turn the heat up.” Turning heat up to medium high. Phone rings. Chats for a minute then suddenly remembers the CREAM…

          10:00 pm

                 “What turn was this?” 

Saturday, 05/26/07

           7:45 am

              Scene: Veronica yawning, trying to wake up. “Need co-ffee.” Kicks “hungry” hubby out of bed instead so he can make the coffee.

            10:00 am

              Scene: Veronica rolling out puff pastry into 1/8 inch thickness and mumbling

“Please.. please… Saint Honore …please make this the bestest puff pastry ever…”

            1:30 pm

                   Scene:  Veronica trying desperately to make spun sugar. But the Caramel Gods were not smiling on her today….

             2:00 pm

                   Scene: Veronica smiling at her finished Gateau Saint Honore. “Hungry” hubby, frowning as he surveyed the chaos in the kitchen.

Cooking Notes:

            One of my experiments during my blogging break was trying to understand puff pastry. I had made it a couple of times before with different recipes, the first few times I ended up with butter pools. The problem could have been caused by a poor recipe, the butter not being properly laminated or the laminator herself – meaning yours truly. The recipe for puff pastry that was chosen for this challenge was by far the best and easiest I have worked with. Working with puff pastry I have come to determine that the following are important:

            The firmness of the dough and butter should be relatively the same. Meaning if you press down on the dough it should feel the same as when you press down on the butter. If one was markedly firmer this will result in a torn dough or tough layers. This is easier said than done. I don’t think I have this down pat yet.

            When rolling the dough do not push down too hard on it or you will ruin the layers. Again, this is easier said than done. I think I am improving in this although I will tell you why I don’t think I have it perfect yet.

             Having a scraper and bench brush handy. Flouring before rolling out your dough is important but too much flour will result in a tough pastry. Always make sure to brush off excess flour with a bench brush.

            My resulting heart-shaped puff pastry was the best I have made so far. It had a ton of flaky layers but there seems to be a dense bottom layer. Now I’m not sure what caused this. I do think I did not roll the dough thin enough and I did forget to prick it with the tines of the fork, but this may also be due to some ruined layers. Or it might be totally something else like the temperature of the oven. More testing should be forthcoming.

             Interestingly enough, pâte à choux was also one of my experiments a few weeks ago. I have made gougères and mango cream puffs during that time. Eggs are what give this pastry its lightness and puff. You must put as much eggs as possible in it but not too much that the batter becomes too thin. Helen said it right when she said that it should be as thick as mayonnaise in consistency. I plan to further tweak the recipe for this and try different flours. Bread flour is considered the best for this application since it absorbs more water thereby allowing more eggs to be used. I also discovered I did not have the right size decorating tips to pipe the cream into them. Mine was a size bigger so I kind of butchered some of the delicate little puffs. So delicious they were (sounding like Yoda.)

             The diplomat crème was very tasty. I think it is important to cook it long enough until the flour taste disappears and it becomes smooth and thick. I nearly messed this up when I was on the phone for what was like a minute. It immediately formed lumps so the lesson is: when the recipe says stir constantly -- do so. It looked like a mousse after it got refrigerated. I’m not really sure if I did this part right. All I know was that it was still easy to pipe but I think I added the gelatin wrong or folded-in the eggs wrong.

              Finally, my nemesis is and always will be Mr. Caramel. I think I was a bit intimidated of dipping the puffs in it worrying that the cream would squish out and ruin the caramel that I was too slow and it cooled down before I was done with it. And instead of reheating it slowly   to make spun sugar, I turned the heat to high and it made it dark real fast and I only had a few strands to use …and I do mean a few. Plus, they dissolved pretty quickly…poof! 

            All in all, this was a challenging project that I had a lot of fun doing. The best part was watching the puff pastry expand and grow in the oven, the cream puffs wiggle as they become lighter as they cook, and the revelation of the amazing flaky layers after digging into the cake. And you know what, the store-bought variety just does not compare to the  aroma and taste of homemade puff pastry.

            So go ahead and visit my fellow Daring Bakers whose links appear at my sidebar.  I am sure they have beautiful pastries to show.