Is it all worth it?

Welcome back to another rung on the ladder of my puff pastry journey. This week, I started to question the purpose of this investigation into this perfect pastry. I started to question whether or not it was worth it. If the store-bought version is already good, is there a point in making it myself? To further prove my laziness, instead of figuring it out myself, I emailed famous Canadian baker, Lucy Waverman. She’s a food columnist for the Globe and Mail, and she has also released many baking cookbooks. Unfortunately, she never got back to me, so I was stuck trying to figure it out for myself. Searching for a fair comparison, I decided to make the same cinnamon rolls that I did last week, only substituting the pastry. I’m currently living right near No-frills, so I just walked for a minute, and picked some store-bought stuff up. It came in a long, rectangular box, with two sheets within. The first thing that I noticed when taking it out of the box is that it isn’t as pliable as the homemade pastry. I

even left it to defrost in the fridge overnight, so I was a little surprised. Luckily, it all worked out just fine. Everything was going according to plan, rolls were complete, just baking in the oven, until my dad poked his head into the kitchen to tell me something.

“Do you smell plastic?”

Instant anxiety. My stomach makes the treacherous journey all the way to my throat. I rush to the oven and open it, searching. Did I not take off the wax paper on the pastry? Did I leave a plastic band on the baking tray? I’ve done that too many times to count, it isn’t out of the question. I place the tray on top of the stove, and do a thorough search of the rolls. Nothing. Everything looks good, so what went wrong? Well, as I was putting them back into the oven, I noticed a piece of tinfoil just hanging out in the bottom corner of the oven. Seriously? After another 15 minutes or so of checking if they were done, and being disappointed when they still weren’t, they were finally out of the oven.

While examining these new cinnamon rolls for differences from the first batch, the first thing that I noticed was the lamination. The point of puff pastry is the lamentation, or the layers, which give it the flaky texture it’s known for. Without these layers, I didn’t think that these textures would come

through. And I was right. While the pastry was definitely crunchy, the sound emanating from each bite proof enough, I wouldn’t exactly call it flaky or even crispy. Instead of layers separated by air, it seemed more like all of the layers were compressed to the point where they couldn’t be differentiated from one another. After the first bite, the pastry didn’t seem to melt in your mouth as much as the homemade version. This caused a feeling of the pastry to feel a bit too dry. Thoroughly disappointed, with one sub-par cinnamon roll down the hatch, I left the rest for my family to greedily devour.

Overall, while the quality of store-bought is definitely many levels lower than homemade, both the convenience and time that it takes almost makes up for it. How much it's really worth it depends on the time that you have to make it.