A Brief History of Puff Pastry with Recipe

Pastries, flaky and buttery, light enough to melt on your tongue. Sweet and savory, fresh from the oven or sitting in a box at work; we just can’t get enough.

Puff pastry is perhaps the most versatile and simple dough to whip up, and most pastry dough variations are just dressed-up versions of this staple recipe. This pastry gets its puff from its laminated dough, which is a dough created by folding butter or another kind of fat binder into a dough mixture repeatedly, which activates the gluten in the flower and creates many flat layers of dough. Puff pastry dough is made  by combining flour, water, and salt that is folded over and over into generous amounts of butter to create layers in the dough. The dough is rolled flat and baked, which causes the dough to rise, leaving numerous air pockets that help to create a light, flaky texture.

What Are the Types of Laminated Dough?

There are many types of laminated dough, though the three original types are croissant, Danish pastry, and puff pastry. Croissant and Danish pastry dough rely on yeast to help them rise, whereas puff pastry rises simply by the strength of the steam produced by the water in the dough. This is because puff pastry is made from an unleavened dough, meaning that it doesn’t contain any yeast or rising agents.  

Variations on puff pastry as we know it today were originally developed in France and Spain. 

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When Was Puff Pastry Invented?

It is believed that the recipe for puff pastry was created sometime in the 1600s, with many attributing its legacy to the painter, le Lorrain. Le Lorrain is a famous Baroque painter who may have briefly apprenticed with a pastry chef in his youth. Legend has it that Lorrain’s father was sick, and had been prescribed a strict diet by his doctor of flour, water, and butter. 

Lorrain wanted to make a special dish for his sick father that would meet his dietary requirements, and in an accident of fate, he mixed water with flour and folded the dough around the butter. He then proceeded to roll it out, and refold it over and over until he had created a laminated dough. His master attempted to stop him from putting his creation in the oven, saying that “all of the butter would run out.” However, he was quickly proven wrong, and puff pastry as we know it was born. 

This story is almost certainly not true. 

A sort of twisted, layered bread, nearly identical to puff pastry in structure and ingredients could be found as early as the 1300s in the Spanish region of Al-Andulas. Al-Andulas is the name historians use to refer to the Islamic-ruled state in modern Portugal, Gibraltar, France, and Spain. This bread was called “mussamana” and it contained a yeast element, which positions the recipe more closely to a croissant dough than puff pastry.

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The oldest known recipe for puff pastry was written in a charter by the Bishop Robert of Amiens in 1311. However it was not until 3 centuries later that François Pierre de la Varenne would publish a recipe for puff pastry in Le Cuisinier François, a well known-cookbook that greatly influenced early modern French cuisine.

How to Make Puff Pastry

Serves: (varies)
Prep time 60 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes
Cook method: Bake

Ingredients

• 1 ¼ cup cold unsalted butter
• ½ cup very cold water
• 2 cups of flour
• ¾  teaspoon salt

Preparation

1. Prepare the détrempe 

Combine salt, and 1 ½ cups flour in a bowl with a ¼ cup of butter cut into quarter inch cubes. When the dough resembles a large, slightly crumbly ball, take out and knead on a lightly floured surface, slowly adding tablespoons of chilled water to the dough. Wrap the dough in plastic and leave it to set in the fridge for a minimum of three hours.

2. The beurrage

This step refers to the process of creating the “butter block” which you will later integrate into your detrempe. You will cream together a cup of butter with ½ a cup of flour before forming the mixture into a 6 by 6 inch square using parchment paper or a small pan. Ensure the beurrage is well covered before chilling it in the fridge for a minimum of 30 minutes. 

3. Laminating the dough: Paton

Remove the detrempe and beurrage from the fridge and roll the detrempe out into a long rectangle. Place the beurrage on one side of the detrempe, then flip it over and use the excess dough to seal the butter inside the dough. Wrap in plastic and chill for 15 minutes before placing the dough on a floured surface.

Roll out the dough starting from the seam, so that the opening is at the center and will prevent the butter block from seeping out of the dough. Begin folding the dough into thirds and repeating this process approximately six times.

The number of folds in puff pastry can be calculated using this formula: ℓ=(𝑓+1)𝑛, where ℓ represents the number of completed layers, 𝑓 equals the number of folds in one completed movement, and 𝑛 represents how many times a folding movement is completed.

Julia Childs suggests 73 folds for a classic puff pastry and 729 layers for the pâte feuilletée fine, a recipe which produces a thinner, more delicate version of puff pastry.

4. Store or Use

The dough must rest for at least an hour before being used, and can also be stored in the fridge for up to five days, or in the freezer for up to six months. This dough stores well because the cold is essential to maintaining its texture and flavor in the first place.

If you choose to bake with your puff pastry dough right away, you will first preheat the oven to 400°F/ 200°C. Then you will either roll the dough flat or cut it into your desired shapes before placing it on a pan lined with parchment paper. 

At this point you may add sweet or savory fillings such as jam and custard or egg and ham. You can wrap the dough around the filling or make an indentation so that it does not drip onto the pan. You can also cook the pastry plain or add an egg wash. 

Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until golden brown and enjoy!

Our Favorite Uses of Puff Pastry

Puff pastry is used in a myriad of desserts, but it also holds an important place in fine dining and home cooking alike. 

Beef Wellington is an English dish of filet mignon and duxelles, a savory mushroom and spice blend used to flavor meat and vegetables. Before baking, it is wrapped in puff pastry that has usually been cut in a lattice pattern.

Cheese straws are another British dish, often served as a simple after-school snack. Shredded cheddar and cayenne pepper are added to puff pastry dough before cutting and braiding the dough into strips and baking it in the oven for 8 to 10 minutes.

Croissants are of course classically constructed from puff pastry, though modern recipes usually include yeast as an ingredient. 

Check out this article to learn more about pastry dough as well as how to make croissants

Article by Chloe Dubisch

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