Every housewife wants to learn about the secret of quick cooking puff pastry at home, which can become the basis for creating a variety of pastries. To taste, it will be a worthy competitor to a store product, since only natural components are the basis of its recipe. The main thing is to be patient and not faint in front of the number of layers!
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One puff pastry - lots of possibilities!
Puff pastry has no analogues in the world of cooking. Any filling will become even tastier thanks to its friability, and everyone’s favorite spicy crunch will be heard in the mouth. Harvesting any puff pastry in the cold will relieve the headache that arises in response to the question "what to bake today?" When you learn how to make puff pastry at home, you can start choosing any sweet and savory pastries, among which all your favorites are:
- Croissants and bagels;
- Rolls and puffs;
- Napoleon cake";
- Pizza and closed cake;
- Chebureks and samsa.
Read also: Napoleon cake in the pan
The variety of fillings allows you to use puff pastry for the preparation of real gastronomic works of art. Two classic cooking recipes: with yeast and without yeast - can be supplemented with other ingredients (cocoa, beer, cottage cheese), and then the standard puff pastry will get new flavor notes.
Recipe 1: Classic Yeast Puff Pastry
Experienced culinary specialists first began adding yeast to pies and rolls in the last century.They noticed that the risen dough instantly increases in size, and the finished product turns out to be magnificent.
The classic puff pastry with yeast is prepared using flour (0.5 kg), milk (1 cup), butter (200 g), dried yeast (7 g) and sugar (2 tbsp). The proportions may vary depending on the desired amount of finished baking.
Step-by-step recipe for making a classic test:
- Prepare white flour and sift it several times through a sieve. Flour must be saturated with oxygen to make the dough lush, light and airy.
- Add granulated sugar to the flour. Its amount may vary depending on the filling. In pies with meat, mushrooms and potatoes, you can add no more than 1 tablespoon of sugar.
- In a glass of milk at room temperature, dissolve the butter (50 g) and add dry yeast.
- Combine the dry and liquid mixture, knead the elastic, but not too tight dough. Put it in the refrigerator for 1 hour until completely cooled.
- Remove the remaining butter (150 g) from the freeze and pack it in a plastic wrap. Roll the butter into a thin layer or beat it off with a rolling pin.
- Remove the chilled dough, roll it into a rectangular layer and lay on it thinly rolled butter. Cover the oil layer with the second half of the dough, fold it into an envelope and roll it out.
- Continue the procedure of folding into an envelope and rolling another 5-6 times.
Do not try to roll out too thin a dough: it should turn out not lower than a centimeter in thickness. This recipe for puff yeast dough is great for Napoleon cake and French croissants.
The perfect batter for croissants
Croissants are an old Austrian food that is loved by both adults and children. It is unlikely that anyone would guess that the French brought the recipe to perfection by adding yeast to the dough. Classic croissants are not like Russian bagels, and every housewife must try to cook them at home.
For croissants, you need to make a classic yeast dough. To make French pastries even softer and more airy, add one and a half times more milk and butter. Do not knead the dough by hand, but do it in the mixer at medium speed. The number of layers should also be increased. Learn croissant rolling technology and choose a variety of toppings - chocolate, jam or cheese.
Chocolate Puff Pastry
Chocolate puff pastry is an innovation in the world of culinary, because so far it is impossible to find on sale. Imagine the furore of sweet pastries made from such a dough made at home!
Cook the puff pastry with yeast and add the cocoa powder in the very first step. Choose quality dark-colored cocoa. The dough will get a beautiful shade and a real smack of chocolate. Chocolate puff pastry is suitable exclusively for sweet pastries: rolls, puffs, rolls.
Recipe 2: Quick Puff Pastry without Yeast
Puff yeast-free dough differs from its counterpart in yeast composition, but has no less interesting taste. Speed in cooking puff pastry - that's what every housewife dreams of! Is it possible not to waste time folding in many layers, but at the same time achieve the necessary structure? An express recipe will answer this question.
To prepare a quick puff pastry without yeast, you will need flour (0.6 kg), water (1 cup), egg (1-2 pcs), butter (250 g), citric acid and salt on the tip of a knife.
All components are combined in a large bowl in the following sequence: sifted flour with salt, grated butter, water with dissolved citric acid, eggs. If you do not have eggs, you can do without them. Mixing occurs very quickly so that the butter does not have time to melt. Next, cool the finished mass for an hour.
The dough is cooked very quickly due to the fact that the resulting mass does not have to be rolled into numerous layers.This recipe is great for making sweet pastries, especially for French buns and curd puffs.
Puff pastry should not be thoroughly kneaded: just collect it in a lump and put in the refrigerator for at least an hour. Too cool dough can cause baking stiffness.
Pizza Puff Pastry
The classic Italian pizza recipe involves putting the toppings on a thin pancake made from yeast dough. Try to change traditions and put sauce with piquant delicacies on puff pastry - the taste will be very refined and sophisticated.
Make a yeast-free dough. It is important to knead the dough yourself, without resorting to a mixer. Pizza dough should always be made by hand. Three hours after cooling, the dough will be ready. Before starting cooking, you should give it a round shape, grease it with sauce, add mushrooms, tomatoes, olives, cucumbers, sausage and cheese. The result is a truly original pizza.
Beer dough “Original”
Men are crazy about dishes with the addition of their favorite hop drink. It is known that they are also big lovers of baking, so they will double enjoy this puff pastry recipe!
Prepare yeast-free puff pastry according to recipe number 2, adding beer instead of water. Choose a light beer with a low ethyl alcohol content. Dark bitter beer will not affect the taste of the dough for the better. Pour the flour into the general mixture at the very last stage. The taste of beer in the finished baking is impossible to feel, so without a doubt you can fill it with any filling.
From this test, wonderful samsa, pasties and pies are obtained.
Curd puff pastry "You can’t imagine easier!"
There is a stereotype that curd dough is suitable only for curd puffs, but in fact it is incomparable for both sweet and savory pastries. It’s great and without the addition of toppings: put a few circles of cottage cheese puff pastry on a baking sheet and leave in the oven for 10 minutes, and you will get great crispy cookies.
Prepare puff pastry without yeast by combining butter with cottage cheese, eggs and water in the first step. You should choose fat homemade cottage cheese of a homogeneous structure without lumps. Add the sifted flour last. Connect all the components, form a bun. Curd dough cools much longer - you need 24 hours to be completely ready for baking. For the filling, cheese and cottage cheese, potatoes, jam are suitable.
Useful tips and interesting facts.
Is it worth hiding that puff pastry is one of the most capricious, because in the process of its preparation it is necessary to take into account a lot of subtleties that begin with the quality of the flour and end with the temperature of the water. Useful tips will allow you to cook the perfect puff pastry, and interesting facts will surprise any housewife.
- Puff pastry is of high cost, but you can significantly save on its preparation. Margarine is 2-3 times cheaper than butter, but it is no worse for making dough. The only thing you should not skimp on is the percentage of fat content: the fatter the milk product, the tastier the finished dough.
- Puff pastry is considered one of the most delicious varieties in the world of cooking, but few people know that in fact it has a completely neutral taste. A specific taste is acquired only after adding the filling.
- In the oven, puff pastry is cooked at high temperature very quickly and practically does not burn. The time allotted for baking one cake for the Napoleon cake can be as little as 5 minutes.
- The first puff pastry was made almost 500 years ago. It is known that an inventive baker used it for baking bread, but now this is not practiced in cooking.
- The total number of layers of dough in the famous Napoleon cake can reach thousands. The more layers in the dough, the better and more airy baking.
Read also:yeast puff pastry recipe
