A new challenge - puff pastry

At the start of class on Tuesday, my baking instructor promised us that after we realized how easy it was to make homemade puffed pastry, we wouldn’t bother with the store bought stuff ever again.

Sorry Chef Deb, but you may have been wrong.  Puffed pastry is a pain in the bum and outside of practicing it in case it’s on my practicum, I doubt that it will be on my weekly rotation after school is done.

Making puffed pastry at first glace does seem easy – flour, salt, butter and water mixed together.  However, it takes hours, and there are about a million places along the way that you can mess it up.  The key is to reduce the amount of gluten created by minimizing mechanical action with the dough (similar to making pie crust).  Sounds easy right? Wrong.  It takes talent to create that perfectly delicate, flaky, buttery, tender puff pastry that you dream about.  And the worst part about it is that if you do end up with tough pastry or pastry that doesn’t rise, you have no clue what you did wrong.

Hours could be spent trying to perfect the technique and you could still have a few too many drops of water added, or maybe that last roll did you in…you will never know. 

And that frustrates the heck out of this savory minded cook. 

Having said all that, I did enjoy the day in class, and made the most beautiful sweet creation that I have ever made.  I spent about 4 hours making a mille-feuille, or a napoleon, as we Americans know it.  Traditionally, this is made with 3 layers of puffed pastry with a pasty cream in between.  The top is covered with fondant or icing and chocolate is drizzled across.  In a word – beautiful. 

It took forever, I panicked that I had ruined my pastry cream, I can’t seem to use a rolling pin effectively to save my life, and I cut the rectangles unevenly the first time around.  But the end result looked amazing. 

I have spent the past 32 years unaware of my hidden talent at piping.  Now that I have discovered this, don’t be surprised if you see me piping anything I can.  Once the rectangles were even, the piping of the pastry cream was a piece of cake (no pun intended) and the rest of the assembly was the easiest part of the dish.

I will admit that my pastry was a bit tough and does need some practice (sigh) but it was still pretty darn delicious. I make a mean pastry cream. And it was beautiful to look at.  I cried a little when I had to cut in to it.

So puff pastry, we will meet again soon I’m sure.  Please be a bit kinder to me, as I’d love to get to the point where I agree with chef and will never use store bought puff pastry.  

Until then, at least I have the pictures of my lovely mille-feuille to look at.