Puff Pastry - Cream Puffs

Y’all get ready for this one. Gird your loins. Dress for battle. This bitch takes a while. Like three days. I'm not exaggerating. 

I literally did puff early on because I wanted to say I had done puff. I had other challenges coming up that required puff, and I knew I couldn’t store buy puff until I had made it because it’s part of my challenge. One doesn’t just always make puff. One makes puff once to say they have made it, and then one moves on with ones life.

I took the liberty of underlining each time you have to put this shit back in the fridge to chill, just so you know.

I used Paul Hollywood’s recipe because he is a god: http://paulhollywood.com/recipes/puff-pastry/

Ingredients:

150 g chilled strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting

150 g chilled all-purpose flour

Pinch of salt

2 large eggs

100ml cold water

250 g unsalted butter, preferably a good quality Normandy butter * I used Aldi butter TBH

Day One:

1. Put the flours, salt, and water into a large bowl and gently mix with your fingers until incorporated.

2. Transfer the dough to a floured surface and knead for 5 – 10 minutes until smooth. The dough will feel a little tight at this stage *so will your arms, if we’re honest.

3. Shape the dough into a ball and put in a plastic bag to chill overnight, or at least 7 hours.

Day Two:

1. Flatten the butter into a rectangle, about 40 cm x 19 cm by battering it down with your rolling pin. Return to the fridge for an hour to harden again. *Dude… This was a pain in the ass. What I saw someone do on youtube AFTER I did this was cut the butter into little pats and put them into a rectangle. THEN you can smooth it all together way more easily (or so I assume). *Paul (first name basis) said that you can put it between two sheets of plastic wrap to make it easier. I don’t know if it was easier, but it was cleaner.

2. Roll out the dough into a rectangle, about 60 cm x 20 cm. Put the butter on the dough so it covers the bottom two-thirds of the dough. Make sure it covers almost to the edges. 

3. Lift the top one-third of the dough and fold over half of the butter. Then fold the bottom half of the butter/dough on top. Now you have a sandwich of two layers of butter and three of dough. *It’s like folding a letter to mail put it in an envelope (if people still do this). Put back in the bag and in the fridge and chill for one more hour. 
4. Take the dough out of the bag and put it on a floured surface with the short end facing you. Roll out to a rectangle like before, keeping the edges as even as possible. *That’s the hard part… 

5. Fold the top quarter down and the bottom corner up to meet in the middle. Then fold the dough in half again at that middle line like you’re making a book. Chill in the bag for one hour.*This is what you see in the picture here. 

6. Take out the dough and put it on a floured surface with the short end facing you (you see where this is going). Roll out into a big rectangle again. 

7. This time fold down one-third of the dough and fold the bottom third over the top (like you did the first time). This is called a single turn. Chill in the bag for another hour.

8. Take out the dough and do another fold like you did the last time- a single turn. Chill in the bag overnight.

Day Three:

Okay, so here’s where you can actually use your dough to make whatever deliciousness you want. I did cream puffs because I hate myself.

I used this recipe to guide my process, but let me also tell you what I experimented with and what I found to work the best. https://www.dixiecrystals.com/recipes/puff-pastry-cream-horns

1. The recipe says to take 8 cream horn metal cones and grease them. *DON’T fucking grease them. For the love of God. Don’t do it. 

2. Use a knife (or a pizza cutter) to cut ½ inch wide strips. Wind the pastry around the cone starting at the tip and overlapping slightly until you run out of strip. 

3. Put dough horns in freezer for about 30 minutes. 

4. Preheat oven to 400 F. 

5. Bake on parchment-lined sheet tray for about 20 minutes until golden brown. *I did several trials here: 

-  froze for 30 minutes- baked at 400 F

-  no freezing, still at 400 F

-  no freezing, bumped up to 425 F

-  finally, freezing again, and still bumped up to 425 F ** This one worked the best for me and my oven. Freezing kept the dough together better and higher temperature blasted the dough and not as much butter seeped out onto the parchment paper during baking. 

6. Now while all that chaos is happening, you can make the filling which is literally just whipped cream. Put one c heavy whipping cream, ½ c powdered sugar, and 1 tsp vanilla in a stand mixer with whisk attachment. Whisk until stiff peaks. 

7. Put whipped cream in a piping bag and once the cream horns are cooled, you can fill them with the whipped cream. *You can also dust with powdered sugar over the top. No one will be mad at that. 

Rating (1 - 5):

Difficulty: 3

Time: 5

Awesomeness: 4

*Was it tasty? Yes. Was it tastier than store-bought? Meh. Was it worth the time? Nope. Not at all.