This is sadly the final installment of the updates for my journey through puff-pastry production. It’s all right to cry, as long as it isn’t onto your pastries. At the beginning of my journey, I planned to use the last two or three updates to try out, and hopefully master french puff pastry, and note the key differences that I found between it and rough puff pastry. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, I wasn’t able to do that many updates, so instead this was the one chance to try it out.
I chose to make danishes again this week. This was for two reasons. First, I really like danishes. Especially the ones that I made last time. The texture and shape are perfect for me, so I wanted to do it again. The second reason is that my Dad offered to make jam for them. Making jam is his hobby which he’s been perfecting for years, so I was more than happy to bank part of my dessert’s success on a jam which I knew would be good. So, for the filling of the danishes, I used homemade blueberry jam.
The main difference between the making of French and rough puff pastry is the difficulty and time that it takes. For instance, with rough puff pastry, the butter that you use is shredded, and then added to the dough itself. But with the French, you make a slab of dough; flour, water, and salt; as well as a slab of butter (the slab of butter is made by cutting up cold butter, putting it on a cold service, adding a bit of flour, and using the heel of your palm to shape it). Leading up to the day, the butter was the part that I was most worried about, but it went off without a hitch. From there, you roll out the dough, place the butter slab in the middle, fold the dough over the butter, turn it over, and roll it out. The rest of the process is just repeating the act of folding the thinly rolled dough over itself, rotating it, and rolling it out again, to create layers.
Not wanting to use too much of one day just making pastries, I decided to put off the danishes until later. So on Monday - two days later - I set out to finalize the finale of my pastry. I did two final rotations of rolling out, and cut the pieces into 4 inch squares. I placed a tablespoon of delicious blueberry jam into the centre, and folded the corners together. Even before the oven, the jam was already spilling out the sides. This was unfortunately only a precursor as to what was to come. I put them in the oven, and after about 10 minutes, smoke had begun to rise out of the oven. The jam had spilled out of the pan, and was burning on the bottom of the oven. Panicked, with smoke piling into my sinuses, I used paper towel held by tongs to wipe the jam out of the oven. The smoke continued, but the pastry was otherwise unaffected.
Eventually, the pastry was out of the oven, and I topped it with powdered sugar. Me and my family dug in, and while I don’t think it was as good as the previous batch were, they were still damn good. Unfortunately, due to the liquid content in the jam, the middle of each danish was a bit under-baked.
After my analysis I found the biggest difference between the two end products was in the lamentation. Because the French puff pastry has a solid form of butter in it, the layers become much more defined, which causes a crispier texture. As well, with a more solid amount of butter in each layer, the steam produced from the evaporation made the danishes rise a lot higher.
In all, the end result of this final experiment was a bit disappointing. Although I feel that finally trying the French version relieved a little bit of tension from my shoulders. Stay tuned for a final post wrapping this whole excursion up!
Here's the puff pastry recipe that I got from one of my PLN contacts:
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