Every housewife has her own signature recipe - be it meat, salads, vegetables or pastries. Each of them usually becomes the subject of discussion among girlfriends and pride for the spouse. Nowadays, not every man can be proud of the culinary talents of his beloved woman. The ability to bake pies can not boast of all modern girls, but men who want their second half to know how to do it - the majority. This article will help make pastries from puff pastry become your hallmark. On the one hand, this is a fairly easy baking that does not require many ingredients, but on the other, the process of kneading puff pastry is complicated and requires many conditions to be met. You need to know three basic secrets when creating puff pastry:
1. Avoid the formation of lumps, even the smallest. Rubbing the dough is necessary only in one direction, namely clockwise.
2. The main secret is the presence of cold. All cold foods should be taken out to the cold. Further, in between rolls, the dough should also be exposed to cold.
3. Rolling puff pastry should be repeated seven times.
So, how to knead puff pastry, the baking of which melts in your mouth. All work can be divided into 3 stages:
1. Kneading the dough.
The flour must be sifted in the form of a slide on a wooden board or in a bowl. Make a depression in the center of this slide. Beat egg, salt, water and citric acid separately. Then this mixture is poured into the recess, after which you can knead a smooth dough. After that, it should be put in a cold place for about 30 minutes, but no less.
2. Preparation of butter.
Puff pastry bakery has a unique taste and appearance mainly due to the correct preparation of oil at this stage. Cold oil must be mixed with 2-3 tablespoons of sifted flour. Next, roll out the resulting mass on a board sprinkled with flour. It is advisable to give it the shape of a rectangle or square. As well as the dough, remove the oil mass in the refrigerator. Before rolling, you need to make sure that the dough and the oil mass are equally cool mixed, otherwise when rolling the butter will not lie evenly, but will remain in one piece, which will ruin the puff pastry, baking just does not work out as it should be.
3. Roll out the dough in layers.
Roll out the dough so that it turns out a square piece larger than a piece of butter dough. It is important that in the middle it is thicker than at the edges. The oil mixture should be placed in the middle of the square-rolled dough and then bent (clearly from right to left). After that, roll out the dough, slightly pressing it. Its thickness should be about 1.5 cm. Next, roll the dough three times or even four times and roll out again. Now you need to put it briefly in the refrigerator, and so that it does not dry - cover it with a damp cloth. Already chilled dough needs to be rolled out again, folded, rolled out again and refrigerated for another 20 minutes. Total, such rolls you should get 7 pieces. Here it is, “easy baking” - it is easy to eat, but not easy to make.
Even if you do everything according to the instructions, this does not guarantee that your pastries from puff pastry will be perfect. For best results, use the following tips:
- Cut raw puff pastry is necessary only with a very sharp knife or a special dough cutter. If the knife is dull, it will flatten the edges, and then pastries from puff pastry simply will not be stratified.
- Do not open the oven for the first 10 minutes.
- Roll out the dough strictly in one direction, and bend it from right to left.
- Homemade puff pastry can be stored for up to 8 days by wrapping it in foil, and in the freezer for up to 6 weeks.
It is also worth noting that you can bake puff pastry in a conventional gas stove or microwave oven. Hostesses want to offer a choice of several original fillings for puff pastry :
- cottage cheese + finely chopped dried apricots or pitted raisins
- finely chopped and scalded with boiling water cabbage + chopped boiled eggs
- minced boiled chicken + fried onions + pickled mushrooms