Patisserie 3: Feuilletage/Puff pastry/Tarte aux Poires/Pear tart with almond cream

I had some pears I wanted to use, so I skipped ahead to an intermediate recipe from the holidays section for a tart with pears, dried fruits, and almond cream. The note at the very bottom of the Tarte aux Poires recipe says: "Readymade all-butter puff pastry dough can replace the homemade." Since I had yet to make any of the puff-pastry-type recipes in the tarts section, I decided to make this one from scratch, essentially turning this one recipe into three (candied orange peel being the third component I needed to make from scratch, also from the holiday section). 

Puff pastry is often used in napoleons and more traditional galettes (french open-faced tinless pies), though recently galettes have sort of fused with pie dough as a base. Puff pastry, like other laminated doughs (doughs that are folded and rolled out multiple times to create layers of butter between layers of dough, rather than creaming together sugar and butter and flour), is very reliant on keeping the dough and butter cold while working with it to minimize the amount of butter absorbed into the dough. The distinct layers then separate slightly during baking, with the steam from the butter layer helping the dough layers puff up and the fat from the butter layer gently frying the dough, achieving a bunch of flaky, crisp layers as a final result. 

To keep the dough cold and flaky, there's three common strategies, usually employed together: 

• Use cold workpieces (marble rolling pin, marble worksurface, or iced work surface)
• Use multiple days to prepare the dough, chilling well in between each folding and rolling process
• Use as little flour as possible and a cold dough to prevent sticking

There's a small fourth rule, for the final rolling out prior to baking, to be gentle and not smush or stretch the dough too much, which I failed to do well, but more on that later.

Once I decided to make this recipe, I began the afternoon before I intended to bake the tart, because puff pastry has at least one overnight chill cycle. San Francisco had a bit of an early summer last week, with highs in the upper 70s, which was honestly terrible for my choice of recipes this week. Additionally, our kitchen island counter where I prefer to work is positioned directly above the dishwasher, and both days that I worked on puff pastry, the dishwasher had just finished running and had dumped as much heat as possible into the marble slab directly above it. So, I settled for the next best thing, which was to use the giant slab of steel we inexplicably have lying around in the kitchen with the cutting boards, with frozen ice packs laid out underneath it to chill the steel while I rolled out the dough. 

The détrempe dough (flour, salt, sugar, melted butter) came together easily, and after letting it chill for 2 hours, I set to making the <<butter square>>. Honestly, I wish I knew a better way to do this; I basically unwrapped the sticks, laid the wax paper back on top, and beat the three sticks of butter with my rolling pin until they flattened out, but they cracked quite a bit and did not completely come together. Next time I try making puff pastry, I will probably try laying all three smushed sticks on top of each other and rolling them out into a square, instead of butt-splicing them.

BUTTER SQUARE BUTTER SQUARE butter square? I 'ardly know 'er square

After making a butter square and rolling out the chilled dough to be large enough to accommodate the butter diagonally, I wrapped as instructed. Getting flashbacks to all those times my origami creases weren't precise enough in my cootie catchers and the corners didn't meet in the middle...

Envelope/butter dumpling ready to be rolled out

I rolled out the dough+butter packet into a long rectangle nearly the entire length of my cutting board, and folded it into thirds, like a letter. This creates effectively 7 layers where there were once 3, counting butter and dough as separate layers (and minus the 2 layers where the dough meets dough). The French count layers of butter and dough as part of the final layers, where other schools might only count layers of butter. I then set it to chill in the fridge for a bit before doing my first tour, or "turn", which begins being counted as soon as a letter-folded dough is first rolled out, and finishes when it gets letter folded again.

After chilling and swapping out for new ice packs underneath the cutting board, I pulled out the dough, rotated it so that one of the open edges faced me, and rolled it out again to initiate the turn. The turn called for rolling out between 8-9mm. I am being very extra and proving that I did such using my calipers here.

I did wash my calipers before taking this photo

After a second turn, it was time to let it chill for "2 hours or preferably overnight." Some quick math: For every turn using the letter fold method, the existing layers are tripled, and then 4 layers of dough-touching-dough are merged into 2 layers. So number of layers = (number of pre-turn layers) * 3 - 2. Traditionally, puff pastry undergoes 6 turns, yielding 1459 layers in the final pastry (hence the name for Mille-feuille cake hinting at its "thousand leaves" of puff pastry and cream).

Typically, two turns are done in succession, and then the dough is returned to chill in order to prevent the butter from melting or the gluten from toughening the dough. So, I set the dough aside for the evening, coming back the next morning to complete two quick turns and shoving it back into the fridge in preparation for the final turns right before baking. 

I moved onto the tart contents. Lacking lemons but having an abundance of oranges, I candied double the amount of orange peel, blanching three times in simmering water for 1 minute at a time, using fresh water in each blanch to get rid of any bitterness in the peel.

Blanched orange peels and naked orange in the back. This company makes good honey, though my choice of Civic Center local honey may be questionable

I then heated a syrup of 3:5 sugar-water, simmered the blanched orange peels for 2 minutes, and removed from heat and stirred in a teaspoon of honey. Since I was going to be using them later that day, I did not decant the peels into a jar to store and just let them cool to room temperature inside the simmering pot and liquid.

Simmering the orange peels in the sugar syrup

It was time for the second to last turn (the final turn is done as part of the final rolling out to size). After the turn, I weighed the entire block of dough, since the recipe for the tart only required 250g. THIS IS NOT A DRILL: THE PUFF PASTRY RECIPE MADE 1200G OF PUFF PASTRY. That's...over 2.5lb of pastry, which is a lot. I cut the dough in half, and then halved one of the halves, figuring that I would not be annoyed with a little extra 50g of pastry while rolling out to a large circle, and put the rest in a labeled plastic bag in the freezer for a future use. The small portion I put in the fridge to chill prior to final turn.

A few layers visible on the cut edge of this portion of dough, and more unfortunately loose pats of butter visible through the thin outer layer of dough

It was time to return to my old nemesis: segmenting citrus. Oranges being firmer than mandarins allowed clean removal of the outside white pith, and the segments were likewise larger and easier to cut out. I laid them on a paper towel to dry the surfaces.

I'm getting better at extracting citrus segments!

At this point, my friend Noah showed up because we were supposed to go to a show soon, and I was running behind schedule and still in pajama pants, so photos get a little sparse. 

I rolled out the portioned puff pastry as thinly as I could, but found two issues: 

• The puff pastry was rapidly warming, and since I was hesitant to flour more liberally, it began to stick to the cutting board and stretch. A few places opened up and began leaking butter. 
• The dough was not very relaxed and "fought" me a lot, rebounding despite being rolled. 

Had I more time, I would have set it back into the fridge to chill and relax more before attempting to roll out to full tart coverage diameter. But I pressed on boldly with quite some pressure to roll out, barely getting to the edges of the tart pan when I finally was able to fit it in. I crimped the edges and then immediately rushed it back into the fridge while I prepped the final ingredients. 

The almond cream was straightforward, and I whisked butter with eggs, almond flour, flour, sugar, cream, and a dash of Dessa's Time and Distance whiskey instead of dark rum. I had three pears, but I suspect the book references smaller fruit than I've ever had on hand, since this is the second time it's asked me to quarter fruit and serve (the first being the upside down caramel apple tart). I cut the pears into sixths, or, for my largest one, eighths. Finally, I drained the candied orange peels from earlier and chopped them up into rough pieces. The recipe calls for dried prunes and figs as well, and I almost stuck in the remaining cranberries from last weekend's tart, but decided against it at last minute and kept it simple. 

I arranged the pears in the tart shell, then the oranges on top, and lastly scattered the orange peels. I then distributed the cream throughout the pan, trying to not exceed "8mm below the rim of the tart), to varying success. I ended up pouring in all but about 2 tablespoons of the cream. I baked with convection heat for 30 minutes at 400deg F with the tart on a supporting baking tray, which was prudent because the cream did overflow in places.

Tart filled and ready for baking! Shout out to Dessa and her very cleverly named bottle of Time and Distance to cure all my heart's ailments

When I returned later that evening (thanks to my roommate Kai pulling the tart out of the oven on time when I had to leave for my event), it honestly looked great! The cream had pulled underneath and around the fruit and puffed up as it baked, evening out the surface, which may have been a little better looking had I added the dried fruits, though the caramelized bits of orange peel and cream are plenty cozy in my opinion. The puff pastry crust had also not shrunk significantly down from the top of the pan, which is always a big concern when doughs seem too stretchy when rolling out (they will tighten and shrink once they bake, and then you get shallow tarts).

I would feel good bringing this to a party, I think!

I had high hopes when I demolded the edge of the tart pan, based on the layers I saw of the puff pastry peeking out from beside the cream.

Nice layers on the border puff pastry, even browning on the edges, and a little bit of overflowing cream on the left side

But alas! All was not as well as it seemed upon the surface! Despite a protective layer of brown sugar and almond flour sprinkled upon the base of the tart pan, the bottom of the puff pastry crust was gummy and pale.

A sad gummy bottom crust, despite a glorious cross section on the vertical sides of the tart

Some thoughts on what went right and what went wrong: 

• Could have poured in a little less of the filling to preserve an aesthetic border, I did not know it would puff up so much in baking
• Sixths was the right call for the pears, and perhaps even eighths, depending on whether people prefer slightly firmer pears or not
• The tart was really great tasting! I really liked the almond cream and how light it tasted with the fresh pears and the little pings of zest.  It, too was consumed by my house and friends in less than 24 hours; we're keeping up better than I thought we would!
  
• I had a hard time keeping the edges of the puff pastry square as I was doing the turns, and the lack of squareness I suspect was structural due to the butter square in the very beginning. A more homogeneous butter square would make it less likely to crack unevenly during folding. 
• If I had the the dough rest more in the final turn, the bottom might not have been gummy. I imagine the borders getting all the flakiness is due to the rolling out pushing the layers of butter towards the edges of the dough as it warmed and I pushed too hard, with the butter layers not having the resilience of the dough layers to spring back into place. 

So, in essence, I think a lot of my problems with puff pastry would be improved if I kept the dough colder, used more flour to keep me honest about the dough needing more rest, and took more time making it.  Which I was fully aware of from the beginning, but somehow still managed to be too impatient for. Luckily, I have 3/4 of the puff pastry recipe left, and while I may not be able to salvage all of the mistakes I made thus far, I can at least see if being aggressive with chilling and gentler with rolling out will be able to prevent the issues from happening to the same magnitude. I will try baking with another quarter next week. 

Quote of the day:
Noah, helpful: "Be careful, you don't want to cut yourself."

Me, cocky: "I've been using this knife longer than I've been in San Francisco."

I have been using my same chef knife for about 8 years now, but I found out later that Noah had just cut himself while cooking the day before. I am still a summer child who has not known the wrath of a knife.