Home-Made Puff Pastry

At all times in my freezer I like to have 1 - frozen pie crust, 2 - Filo dough, and 3 - Puff Pastry for those "just in case" quick to make pastry desserts.  After all I am a dessert fiend.  Secretly I also like eating frozen pie crust dough.  It's a texture thing.  Imagine my joy when I finally found a recipe in which I can make my own puff pastry.  This fits right in with my "make everything from scratch" goal this year.

Puff Pastry

1 cup flour

1/3 cup cake flour

1 and ½ sticks (3/4 cup) butter, cold and cubed

¼ tsp salt

¼ cup ice cold water

Freeze all ingredients for 1+ hour.  Combine dry ingredients.  Cut butter into dry ingredients.  Add water 1 Tbs at a time until the dough comes together in a ball.  Knead on floured surface.  Roll out, fold in thirds, repeat four times, turning dough 90 degrees each time.  Store in the freezer.  If using that same day, freeze at least 45 min before use.

Freeze all ingredients.  I combined the dry ingredients and froze the butter separately.

Cut up the frozen butter into chunks.

Food processor dry ingredients with butter cubes.

Process until it resembles sand.

Then slowly add ice cold water.

Add water until it just barely comes together and starts to clump, forming the dough.

Dump the dough out on a floured surface and knead it together into a ball.

Roll out on a floured surface.

Fold in thirds and roll out again.

Move the dough 90 degrees and continue the roll and fold into thirds about 4 times.

The dough should start to look more smooth as you go along.

When done, fold into thirds again and freeze it.

Home made puff pastry.  Not as tasty as frozen pie dough.  But that is why I like to have both available.

Just in case quickly made Elephant ears made with my home-made puff pastry.

Enjoy!